


Carry In My Core (That Voice I Adore)

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Opera, F/M, In which the author’s freudian boner is singing loud and proud, This really really really really really didn’t need to exist and yet here we are, memories of abuse, overpowering your father but in an opera context, semi-linear narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-09-05 08:13:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16806826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Starring in her first opera would be stressful as is, but Rey, always one to outdo herself, just had to go and make things even more complicated with Kylo Ren.  It’s hard enough looking him in the eye, much less pretending to be in love with him.  She can make it through this.  She has made it through worse.  Shecanmake it through this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance to anyone who actually knows how operas rehearse and how opera companies are structured. I sure as fuck don’t, but that didn’t stop me from doing this, did it? While I am basing this opera company off of the one(s?) that perform at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, I can’t even begin to pretend that it’s accurate in any way. 
> 
> There are memories of physical abuse in Rey’s past sprinkled throughout this story. I’ll let you know when those are happening, in the chapter notes.
> 
> The fic is complete, but I think the posting cadence is going to be largely whimsical because I'm stressed trying to figure out if I want it to be weekly or bi-weekly. I can guarantee it'll all get posted though!
> 
> Re: the semi-linear narrative tag—stuff that’s baseline in italics is not-necessarily-linear flashbacks; stuff that’s baseline normal text is linear. 
> 
> The title comes from a line near the end of _The Marriage of Figaro_ :
> 
> _Pace, pace, mio dolce tesoro,_  
>  io conobbi la voce che adoro  
> e che impressa ognor serbo nel cor.
> 
> Thank you so much to ever-so-reylo for helping me pin down how to translate the title, as well as helping me over some roadblocks while writing this. Thanks to stormdancer eternally for betaing, and politicalmamaduck for cheerleading and helping with some early-stage problem solving! Also thanks to SJS (who isn’t in any fandom at all) for being my opera consultant.

“It’ll be ok,” Rey mutters to herself as steps through the door, her score clutched to her breast. _It’ll be ok._

“It’ll be ok,” Finn repeats to her with the tone of one who is encouraging without any idea of why they have to be encouraging. She loves him for that. She really does.

Her heart is hammering in her throat.

“Chin up, you can take him.”

For a wild moment, she wonders just what Finn knows. And then she realizes—he’s talking about Snoke, not Kylo.

Rey takes a deep breath, willing her nerves to calm themselves.

She can. She will. She has no choice.

If she had a choice, she’d be running for the hills right now.

“You’ve got this,” Finn says, grabbing her arm before she makes her way backstage. “And if you need me, call me.”

“No matter where you are, no matter how far,” Rey responds out of habit.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Finn quotes back at her. He gives her a quick squeeze, and Rey pushes the door to the rehearsal room open.

Her eyes fly immediately to Kylo. His broad back is to her as he talks to Snoke, who is sitting in a large, cushioned chair. Rey’s heard people talk about how the director has back problems, feet problems, knee problems, head problems. He doesn’t get to his feet as Rey crosses the room to stand a little behind Kylo. She sees the way he stiffens as the door shuts behind her, as her feet make noise against the hardwood floor.

“Ah, young Rey,” Snoke says, his eyes landing on her. “Are you ready?”

She nods and clears her throat. She’d warmed up in the shower that morning, had had a good breakfast despite her nerves keeping her from being actually hungry, and that was about as good as it was going to get. The memory of Friday had stung at her brain every time she’d tried to relax this weekend, which meant she had barely slept.

She hopes that it won’t affect her singing. That will only add insult to injury.

Snoke glances over at the piano, where Mitaka is sitting attentively, ready to dive into whatever accompaniment is needed.

“You should start,” Snoke tells Kylo, “In the center of the stage. We don’t have a measuring tape for you now, but we will soon enough. I trust you can pretend.”

Without a word, Kylo turns and places himself on his hands and knees in the middle of the floor. Snoke then turns to Rey. “You will begin entering through the back,” he says. “I want you to enter four bars before you start singing and watch your beloved measuring the space for your bed.”

Rey cringes but doesn’t let Snoke see that. Instead, she walks briskly past Kylo on his hands and knees, as Mitaka beings to play a few bars before Kylo’s entrance and when he begins to sing Rey’s heart twists and turns into nineteen different pieces.

❖

 _Rey_ _is sitting in the last row of sopranos when she hears Kylo Ren sing for the first time and her heart practically stops._

_She’s heard that voice before. She has. Except she hasn’t. It’s richer than Han Solo’s voice, and lower too. But he sounds so much like him. So very much._

_She sits up straighter in her seat, craning her neck and glad that she’s above average height because it means that, for the most part, she can see over the heads of the other women in her section. She can’t see his face the way they’re sitting now. He’s got long dark hair, and he holds himself perfectly still as he sings. She wishes he was the sort of singer that got too involved in himself and rolled along with the music. Then maybe she’d be able to see his face._

_She wants to see his face. She wants to see if he looks like Han Solo, the way he sounds like him. She wants to see if his eyes light up when he sings._

❖

“Stop, stop,” Snoke cuts in and Mitaka stops playing the piano. “You are _in love_ with one another. Figaro is measuring out his room to put a nice big bed for you to fuck in. At least pretend that you like one another.”

Kylo won’t even look at her. It takes every ounce of strength that she has to look at him, and he won’t even look at her.

“Do I need to lock you two in a closet?” Snoke asks lazily and Rey stiffens. He glances at Mitaka. “At least they _sound_ good.”

They do.

Rey hates it.

She hates how good Kylo sounds when he sings, and hates the way that her voice seems to melt into his, harmonies seeming to glow in the air around them. When it had just been the two of them and Amilyn, it had felt almost like fate, especially once she’d started to understand him, started to care about him. Now, though, it’s just a reminder of what happened in one more horrible way because—as she’d been so fond of reminding herself in the early days of rehearsal—he sounds just like Han Solo in Rossini’s _Barber of Seville_ , the 1985 recording that Rey had listened to religiously for so many years.

Snoke sighs. “Again. With feeling this time, please. You’re getting married. The idea that there is anything impeding your marrying one another is enraging and heart-wrenching. Please act like it.”

They try again.

They try again and this time, when she looks in his eyes she pretends that Friday hadn’t happened, that Friday wasn’t even close to either of their minds. She goes one step further. He is not Kylo Ren. He is not the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, the nephew of Luke Skywalker. He is a humble barber in Seville, and she loves him with all her heart, and this time, when Snoke cuts them off, it is with a, “Better. Kylo—any time she’s within arm’s reach of you on the stage, I want you to be reaching for her. Her waist, her arm, her cheek—whatever makes the most sense. Physical intimacy, please.”

And Rey feels her face heat so quickly that she’s sure she looks as sunburned as she did on her worst days growing up. She can’t look at him now. Not when the moment that Snoke had told him to touch her, her mind had flown, once again, to Friday.

When his hands do graze against her, it’s the small of her back, her forearm, the nape of her neck. He knows to steer clear of her waist, her stomach. And she begs her mind to continue to think that he’s Figaro—not Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren can’t bring himself to look at her, but Figaro loves her, wants her, needs her—

“Much better,” Snoke tells them when they reach the end of their staging. “Much much better. I actually almost believe you might almost care about each other.” He eyes land on Rey. “By the end of this, you will give me everything.”

Rey bites her tongue. Something about the way he says it makes her feel oddly cold, despite the heating of the room.

Snoke dismisses them, and Rey gathers up her bag from the corner and leaves the rehearsal space as quickly as she can, heading to the elevator that will take her down several floors to the break room where, she hopes, Finn will be.

Kylo, thankfully, is not on her tail, and as she gets in the elevator, she sees him walking slowly down the hallway with Snoke. Snoke’s hand is on his shoulder, fingers brushing against the nape of his neck and Kylo’s jaw is tight, his gait stiff.

❖

 _Every_ _time he sings, he sounds like Han Solo, and it almost lets Rey forget that Han Solo is dead. He lives on in Kylo Ren’s voice, she thinks, and she focuses on that because if she doesn’t focus on that she has to focus on the fact that Kylo Ren is not Han Solo._

_Granted, she doesn’t know what Han Solo would have been like in rehearsal. She likes to imagine he was charming, delightful; that he, Leia Organa, and Luke Skywalker had made a triad like what she sometimes feels with Finn and Bebe. She knows that Palpatine had loved Luke Skywalker, had boosted his career, promising him glory the likes of which he couldn’t even dream of, but Han had never gotten that sort of attention from a director._

_Kylo does though._

_During the final rehearsals of_ Elektra _Snoke gets this look on his face whenever Kylo does pretty much anything, even though he strains at some of the higher notes he has to sing because he is not, in fact, a baritone. Rey doesn’t think that it is the look of a proud father—she doesn’t know what a proud father would even look like, since god knows Unkar hadn’t been one for her—but he looks almost hungry when he looks at Kylo. And Kylo revels in it._

_“The only true talent that this house has produced in years,” she hears Snoke tell him while they’re all waiting for the elevator one day. “More than anyone in your bloodline. You can’t train that sort of talent, it only can come through blood. And you’ll be the one that is remembered for centuries, believe me. Next season we’ll have one that has a better role for you.” He pats Kylo on the shoulder and Rey sees his thumb caress the nape of his neck._

_The elevator dings and Snoke gets in, going up to his office, presumably. The down button is still illuminated and Kylo continues to wait. He only looks around when Rey comes to stand where Snoke had been moments before._

_“So you think that you’re better than everyone else because you’ve got it in your blood, do you?” she asks him. She remembers Poe’s story about how he pushed his father onto the subway tracks, about how hard he pretends not to be a member of his own family. And here he is, letting Snoke praise his bloodline for all his talent._

_He looks down at her as though surprised that she’s even there. She can see that she’s caught him off guard, that he doesn’t know what to say and she goes in. “You’re not the only talented singer in the universe. Your father was the one who made me want to sing—not you.”_

_The elevator dings open and Rey steps towards it, expecting him to follow. To her surprise she sees him standing there, planted to the ground as the doors close again, looking so completely shocked that he had forgotten to move._

_His hand darts out at the last minute, triggering the motion sensor in the elevator doors and the jerk back open for him to step inside._

_“You’re the girl everyone’s talking about,” he says._

_“I don’t know what that means,” Rey says, not bothering to sound polite. She’s too angry to care about what this might do to her career, about just what he could do to make sure she’s never cast as anyone in any show ever._

_“You don’t?” he asks dryly before his brow furrows. “No. You don’t, do you?”_

_Rey glares at him angrily, and it almost makes him smile._

_“Don’t go saying stuff like that around Snoke,” he tells her at last. “Say what you want to me, but if Snoke hears you, he’ll—”_

_“Is that a threat?”_

_“It’s advice. You need a teacher.”_

_“I don’t need anyone,” Rey snaps. She’s never had anyone. The closest she’s had to someone is Finn and Bebe and who does Kylo Ren think he is, anyway, offering her advice while taking praise about how he was born for this, as though Rey wasn’t._

_“You do,” he tells her quietly as the elevator opens on the first floor and Rey bursts out of it like a bat out of hell, walking as quickly as she can to get away from him, her whole body shaking with anger._

❖

“You make it through?” Finn asks her.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mutters.

“What _happened_ , Rey?” Finn’s face is suddenly very serious. “Did he—” and she knows where the question is going before he has time to finish it and cuts him off with a strong,

“No. No he didn’t. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Finn frowns and for a moment, she thinks he’s going to let her get away with it. Then, he says, “Is this like you not wanting to talk about your parents or not wanting to talk about that time that Luke Skywalker was a dick to you?”

She closes her eyes. Thinking about Luke Skywalker is the farthest thing from helpful right now.

❖

 _Rey_ _is crying._

_She always cries—when she’s hurt, when she’s angry, when she’s heartbroken._

_She is sitting on a bench near the 72_ _nd_ _street exit of the park, the sound of cars behind her on Central Park West providing the perfect backdrop for her misery._ He didn’t have to be horrible, _she thinks bitterly as she furiously rubs her eyes._

_She’d spent years reading interviews with Luke Skywalker, listening to him on cd. She’d even made a playlist on her iPod back in conservatory of all of her favorite recordings of him._

He could have been supportive, _she thinks again miserably. But that’s what idols are for, right? To let her down? Han Solo had died before she’d finished conservatory and Luke Skywalker had been downright mean in the masterclass._ Opera is a dying art, and it’s arrogance to think it’s the only kind of art worth making. _As if Rey had even begun to think that. As if she didn’t love all music, but opera was what had filled her soul, had made her feel alive and part of something bigger than the guitar she’d taught herself on days that were too hot to go outside. What did he want of her anyway? To go and form a rock band?_

_Someone sits down next to her on the bench, despite there being a good three benches nearby that are completely empty of crying, miserable people who just want to be alone and she turns her head to tell the stranger that and finds herself face to face with Kylo Ren._

_“I don’t have time for this,” she tells him._

_“For what?”_

_“For you to be an asshole right now. I really can’t handle it.”_

_“What happened?”_

_She laughs bitterly. “Let me just be alone and miserable, will you?”_

_“No,” he replies and Rey’s eyes widen. “You shouldn’t be alone and miserable.”_

_“Oh don’t go being nice to me,” she grumbles. “Not when I’m alone and vulnerable.”_

_“Why do you hate me?” he asks her._

_“You killed your father,” she says without preamble. “You think that you’re better than everyone else just because you come from a long line of singers. And you have the timing of a demon, trying to be nice to me when your uncle just crushed my soul a little bit.”_

_Kylo doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t look away. His eyes flicker between each of hers._

_“He can be soul-crushing, my uncle,” Kylo says at last. “And you try walking into any opera house and having everyone immediately talk about how much they love him, your mother, your father, your grandfather before they’ve even heard your sing—everything they ever place value on is predetermined and none of it’s yours.”_

_He doesn’t address this father at all._

❖

“Rey,” Finn repeats and Rey looks at him sharply.

“Please, Finn, just—just let it be. I know you want to help, but I don’t think there’s any way to help right now, so I—” she cuts herself off. Kylo has rounded the corner and, upon catching sight of her, clenches his jaw and whirls about, going back in the direction he came from.

Finn watches him go, frowning.

“Do I need to beat him up?”

“Don’t you dare,” Rey says fiercely. _It’s my fault,_ she cries internally. It’s always her fault. She always makes a mess of things, drives people away. Why not Kylo, like her parents? “You’ve worked _hard_ for this. I won’t have you fuck it up because I did something stupid.”

Finn turns his frown to her. “Because you did—”

“Let’s get lunch,” Rey says forcefully.

“I’m with Snoke in twenty minutes,” Finn replies, apology dripping from his every word.

“Right.” Rey tries to keep her disappointment out of her voice. “Right, well, we’ll get coffee later, or something. Or I’ll see you at home.”

She goes to fetch her things. A week before, she might have stuck around for as long as she could, to chat with the other singers, or even just to _be_ here. She loves this opera house, how it is bursting at the seams with life and noise and everything. But today it is too loud. Today it is too full of people and Rey finds herself longing to be by herself.

She can’t remember the last time she wanted that.

“Something happen with your boyfriend?”

Rey takes a deep breath. Of course.

She’d been so focused on making it through her rehearsals today that she hadn’t even let herself begin to worry about what more might come out of the woodwork. But when it rains, it pours—or so she’d learned since she’d left the southwest to come to the northeast—and standing in the hallway, blocking her path to the exit, is Armitage Hux.

“It’s none of your business,” Rey snaps at him. She had given up the pretense of being polite to Hux the moment that Kylo had told her not to bother. _Of course he’s playing my dad,_ Kylo had said with a roll of his eyes, _because we look so much alike._ Her stomach squirms at the memory.

“Oh, struck a nerve have I? What happened.”

“What part of ‘none of your business’ didn’t you understand?” Rey demands, avoiding his eyes.

“I suppose I’ll just get Ren to tell me,” Hux yawns. “Since he won’t be looking to protect you now, from the looks of it.”

“I don’t need his protection,” Rey retorts. Because she doesn’t. She hadn’t.

“Of course you do,” Hux laughs unkindly. “How many bridges do you think you can burn, Johnson, before your moderate talent isn’t enough to get you places anymore? Politics always matter, and you don’t want to piss off the wrong people.”

“Good thing you’re not the wrong people to piss off,” she says.

“Is that still true?” he leers at her. “If your boyfriend won’t defend you to Snoke anymore. Maybe I hold your career in the palm of my hand.”

“I’ve survived bullies like you before,” Rey calls after him as he begins to make his way down the hall. “I’ve more than survived them. But you’ve never survived someone like me, have you?”

Hux only laughs. “I don’t need to worry about surviving someone like you. “

❖

 _Rey’s_ _cold hits her like a truck and she calls in sick to rehearsal with a long apologetic note to Amilyn. (_ I really think that if I can take today to sleep, I’ll be back in fighting order come tomorrow _). She takes so many cold meds she’s pretty confident she’s high off them when she wraps herself in her comforter and sits by the radiator and puts on a recording of_ Figaro _that had gone up in San Francisco the year before._

_Rose is playing Rosina in it, and Rey texts Finn at rehearsal._

Let’s make friends with Rose.

_Finn’s reply is immediate._

She almost bit Hux today because he was being asinine so I can safely say I’m already there.

Your countess is worthy.

Yeah. No offense but you haven’t bit Hux lately you can have your dumb barber.

I don’t want my dumb barber. I want a refund.

Maybe if you wait long enough, he’ll grow out of his whiney teenager phase and turn into his dad.

Wait, in this case are we talking Bartolo because I don’t want Hux.

HAHA

No I meant Solo. You still get wet listening to that recording of him from 1985, don’t you?

_Which is when Rey decides that she’s too loopy to finish texting and so she puts her phone away and keeps listening to Rose singing._

_She wakes much later to Finn coming home and she groans at him from her bed._

_“That sounded like it had substance to it. How’s your voice?” Finn calls from the kitchen._

_“I’m not sure,” Rey replies before sighing contentedly. It doesn’t hurt to talk and she has left the stage of vocal fry where her voice is so low it sounds high-pitched. She sounds like an alto now, and if she plays her cards right tonight, she’ll hopefully be a soprano again tomorrow._

_“I brought you soup,” Finn says._

_“You’re my hero,” she tells him as he places a large mug of it on her bedside table. “How was it today?”_

_“It was fine,” Finn says. “They shifted around what they were planning to do since you weren’t there. I heard Hux say that you were probably playing hooky to avoid Ren.”_

_Rey closes her eyes. “Not entirely false,” she says. “I am sick, but it was a relief not to see him.” Or hear his voice, or think about him at all._

❖

She walks alone to the A when she finishes for the day. Finn and Rose are still on for another hour and she has no idea where Bebe is, and is too drained to find out. She knows that none of them will begrudge her early departure as she lets her feet take control and bring her to the subway that will carry her north towards Harlem.

 _I made it through,_ she tells herself. _I made it through. I kept my head high._

But now that she’s out of the Met—well it doesn’t matter. She’s just another New Yorker, blending in with the rush hour crowd, cramming onto too-crowded trains and trying to get home to her too-small apartment. _I am independent,_ she reminds herself. There’s no more Unkar to drain her of everything she tries to make for herself. She has friends. She has a job that she loves, for the most part. When she doesn’t have to pretend to be in love with Kylo Ren.

She sticks her head out over the tracks. Bebe usually does this, leaning out so far that Rey has to grab her sweater because Bebe may think her head will reattach easily to her body, but Rey would prefer her friend not die. But Bebe’s not here today, nor is Finn. And nor is the A train.

She sighs and goes and sits on a bench, closing her eyes for a few moments.

On Friday, she’d been in this very train station with Kylo, going in the other direction, because of course he lives downtown. He’d held her hand and her heart had leapt into her throat with the sheer excitement of it all, her mind aswirl with what it all meant.

There’s something so freeing about being lost in the crowds of New York. You can do whatever you like and no one will care. There are too many people doing too many things for anyone to retain for more than a microsecond that one young woman sitting on a bench in the Columbus Circle subway station is crying quietly to herself.

Rey takes comfort in that.

And when the train pulls up she opens her eyes and sees Kylo standing across the tracks, waiting for the downtown A, staring at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As noted in the fic, _[Elektra](https://youtu.be/mhRa3cmeYIg)_ doesn’t have large bass roles and while I know it’s very unlikely that they’d cast a bass in a baritone role, I decided to Just Go With It because I wanted to use _Elektra_ for Reasons.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A good thing about not having a posting schedule is that when life feels oiawenfklan;kfalk I can go "Hey, I'll post a chapter."
> 
> For those of you who follow me on tumblr, I'm probably very soon going to stop posting fic updates over there. I'm sorry about that but the censorship on that website is making me deeply uncomfortable. I plan to post to pillowfort when it reopens (I have an account there already) and possibly post fic updates on twitter (if it stops making me anxious, but I know at the moment it's more accessible than Pillowfort to the wider fandom) but yeah.....
> 
> Hope you all enjoy this one! I'm sorry I haven't replied to all of your reviews yet--I will soon and I'm so glad you're enjoying the fic so far!!
> 
> There are some memories of physical abuse in this chapter. Endnotes contain passages to skip.

__

_Unkar is shaking someone down again. She can hear it in the garage, the loud wailing cries of someone who hadn’t made good on their end of the bargain. “Please,” she sometimes hears. “No, I promise! I promise!”_

_She puts her headphones in and jams the chord into her old discman and turns_ The Magic Flute _up as loud as she can, pressing pillows over her ears so she can’t hear anymore. She can only hear Leia Organa as Pamina, Luke Skywalker as Tamino, and Han Solo as Papageno, his voice smoother and deeper than the other two. In the moments of quiet spoken German, she prays she won’t hear anything through her closed window and through the layer of pillows._

_She is far away. She is not in the too-hot house in the too-hot desert. She hums along to Papagena, letting herself believe that she makes up the fourth of the quartet, that she has found her Papageno and he is taking her as far from this as he possibly can._

❖

Nothing in Rey’s life has ever been easy.

Her earliest memories are of loneliness, and she likes to think she has a self-reliant streak that’s strong enough to power all of Manhattan. And maybe it’s that time has eased the ache of growing up with Unkar Plutt, but constantly being thrown across Kylo Ren’s path seems by far the hardest thing she’s ever had to do.

It’s like she sees him everywhere still. At the Starbucks near Lincoln Center, at Columbus Circle time and time again waiting for trains, sitting by the fountain in the middle of the plaza in front of the Met while he scrolls through his phone. Sometimes she even sees him walking with Hux, even though she knows he can’t stand Hux. He’s everywhere, his eyes snapping to her briefly—just long enough for her to see the visceral upset in his face once again before he turns away again.

He has always been an open book, even when he’s trying to be subtle. She doesn’t think he knows how to be subtle.

It’s probably what makes him a good opera singer.

❖

_“Look, I’m just saying you get all blushy whenever you look at him now,” Bebe points out._

_“I do not,” Rey says firmly as they make their way out of the train at Columbus Circle._

_“You do,” Bebe insists._

_“We’re not going to do that_ do not, do too, do not, do too _thing. We’re too old for that.”_

_“You’re never too old for anything,” Bebe retorts. “And do too.”_

_“Look, it’s not that big a deal, ok? He’s just…he’s nicer than I thought he was.”_

_“So you do like him.” But far from sounding pleased, Bebe sounds nervous._

_Rey gives her a soft smile, one that she hopes is soothing. “I can look after myself,” she says. “You know I can. But I don’t think I’m going to have to.” Bebe doesn’t look convinced._

_“He’s huge and rude and has anger issues,” Bebe says._

_“And he’s also quiet and gentle and supportive,” Rey responds. “I can look after myself. I can show him the door if he’s not what I think he is.”_ He is what I think he is, _she doesn’t say aloud. She knows Bebe won’t hear it._

_Bebe is mistrustful of strangers. Some would call it shy, but Rey knows that it’s distrust. Her friend has always been the sort to draw the attention of the sort of men who she wishes would steer clear of her. She is quite confident that Bebe would commit murder if driven to it, and has a wicked sense of humor around those she trusts, but it doesn’t surprise Rey at all that she’s wary of Kylo._

_“You’ll see,” she tells Bebe. “I promise—he’s not that bad.”_

_“Anyone that Snoke likes that much is bound to be that bad,” Bebe says. “But I’m not going to tell you what to do. Not least because I know you won’t listen.” Then, she pauses. “Supportive and gentle?”_

_Rey nods and that soft smile comes back to her lips. “Yeah. Supportive. And I don’t think he’s doing it for him. I really think he’s listening to me.” She feels stupid saying it. She feels stupid meaning it too. But the only people in her life who had ever done that are Bebe and Finn. That Kylo is starting to, that he seems to care about her is more than she knows how to process._

_“I’m glad,” Bebe says quietly. “And I do hope you’re right. I really do. You deserve it.”_

_“But you don’t trust it.”_

_Bebe hesitates, but didn’t say a thing._

❖

“You’re not menacing enough,” Snoke says, cutting off the piano, his eyes landing on Finn. “She doesn’t want your attention but you hold power and aren’t to be denied. You aren’t the Almaviva of _The Barber of Seville_. You are uncaring. And you—” he turns to Rey. “Please make me believe that you like him less than your fiancé. At least a little bit of acting will help.”

Rey looks at Finn. His jaw is clenched but he doesn’t say a word.

“Yes,” Snoke says. “That. Keep that jaw tense just like that. I want to believe that you would force yourself on her, so desperate are you for her. You don’t know that Cherubino is behind the chair.” He turns at last to Bebe. “You’re…adequate.”

“I hate him,” Finn says to Rey and Bebe after rehearsal and Rey loops her arm through Finn’s as they make their way out of the opera house towards Columbus Circle again. “Did you hear how marketing’s apparently waging war to put me on as many promotional materials as they can? Want to show off their big black lead—but Snoke’s trying to make me as rapey as possible.” Upset doesn’t even begin to describe the tone of Finn’s voice. “Big scary black man exerting himself over the poor unsuspecting white woman. I see how it is.”

“You’re _not_ Almaviva,” Rey says firmly. “And he is right—I do like you more than my _beloved_. I know that’s not—”

“Yeah, I know,” Finn says brusquely. “It’s the systemic bullshit. And I know it won’t cross most people’s minds at all. Hell, it’ll probably just subliminally confirm what they get in so many other media and they aren’t going to think critically about it for more than ten seconds.”

“Or they’ll be thrilled to see a black man front and center in a Mozart opera,” Rey tries. Whether or not it lands properly, she doesn’t know. Finn broods until the train’s at 125th Street, and she gets the impression that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, so instead she chats with Bebe and lets him feel whatever it is he’s feeling.

“I get the impression that Snoke would be happier directing something else,” Bebe says. “He’s never been much of a comic director.”

“Pity they didn’t give him _Don Giovanni_ then,” Rey says. “That would have been nice and serious for him.”

“Or, like, _The Ring Cycle_.”

Rey shudders. “One opera working with him is bad enough. _Four_ just sounds cruel.”

“Also Wagner’s the worst and I hate him,” Bebe says nonchalantly. The train stops at 125th Street and she springs to her feet. “See you tomorrow!” And she’s gone.

Rey glances at Finn. He’s texting and Rey leans her head against his shoulder, but doesn’t say a word as the train carries them further up Manhattan.

❖

_“So you grew up listening to him, then.” It’s a statement, not a question, and there is no forced-casual to his tone._

_“Yeah,” she says. “He and your mom and uncle made me want to sing to begin with.”_

_His face darkens when she refers to his mother and uncle. She should have expected that. But she finds he doesn’t care._ He has a family _, she thinks angrily._ He has a family and all I had was Unkar Plutt and his goons and bruises on my stomach that hurt so badly I couldn’t breathe sometimes.

 _“Was it always_ Barber _?” he asks. “Or did you listen to anything that was actually good.”_

 _That rankles. “_ Barber _is good.”_

_“It’s mainstream,” he says, rolling his eyes. “It’s fine. It’s not high art.”_

_“It’s lovely. It’s beautiful, and lighthearted and—”_

_“Always makes money. That’s why they’re doing_ Marriage _. To make money. You can always get the old WASPs out for Mozart, but if you try and do anything interesting the house is almost empty.”_

_“Like what? What should we be doing then? What’s better than Mozart?”_

_“_ Parsifal _,” Ren says and Rey can’t help it she bursts out laughing._

 _“You’re all judgy about Mozart but Wagner—he’s_ totally _not mainstream. Bet you anything the old WASPs come out for Wagner too.”_

 _“Yeah, but not as much as they will for_ The Marriage of Figaro _, you mark my words. And at least it’s not so overdone that there’s nothing new and interesting to the performance anymore,” he says. “Go on. Tell me you’re not bored by every rehearsal we’re in.”_

_“Don’t let Snoke hear you saying that or else he’ll stop looking at you like you piss gold.”_

❖

Rey recognizes the woman instantly, and her throat goes dry.

Once, the idea of seeing Leia Organa talking on her phone on the plaza in front of the Met would have made Rey so excited she wouldn’t have known what to do with herself. Leia Organa—a hero quite as much as her husband and brother. But instead, anxiety floods her and she wants desperately for the other singer not to notice her, wants that skill that she had honed living in Unkar Plutt’s house that made it so easy for her to avoid notice to come back in full force.

But luck hasn’t been on Rey’s side for at least the past two weeks, if not longer, and as she tries to make her way past her, Leia Organa’s eyes fall on her and Rey hears her say, “I’ll call you back, Lando,” into her phone before hanging up and calling out, “Rey.”

Rey freezes.

“Ms. Organa,” Rey squeaks out, clearing her throat.

“Leia, please,” Leia says, extending her hand, a warm smile on her face. Rey takes it, shakes, and bites her lip, more than a little nervously. “I’ve been wanting to say since you got cast—congratulations on Susanna. I’ve heard such wonderful things about you and am so very excited for your performance.” Rey’s mind flies at once to Kylo. From everything she’d heard, it sounded as though he and his mother don’t talk anymore. _Did he tell her about me?_ That just made everything worse. “Amilyn says you have a voice like honey.”

“You know Amilyn Holdo?” Rey asks, not bothering to keep her relief out of her voice that it wasn’t Kylo’s testimony that had Leia so excited about her.

“We went to school together,” Leia says. “She’s a dear friend.” Leia looks around. “I’d been hoping to run into you. I want to take you out to lunch sometime.”

“I—” Rey begins. Kylo’s mother wants to take her out to lunch. Luke Skywalker’s sister. Han Solo’s widow. But most importantly, the best Pamina to ever grace the stage, a prima donna who had dominated the community for more than two decades—one of the greatest singers of all time. “I’d love that,” she says.

“Excellent,” Leia tells her. They exchange numbers and Rey is feeling positively dazed when she agrees to join Leia for dim sum that Saturday. Leia gives her a warm smile before departing that keeps Rey warm all the way through rehearsal.

❖

_“A little tighter with her corset. She doesn’t actually have to sing this time, and that way they won’t have to photoshop breasts onto her.” Snoke is already gone before Rey’s even had time to realize that her hackles are up. She’s gone completely stiff as Kaydel goes to tighten the corset a little more._

_“I’d say deep breath, but you probably want to exhale,” Kaydel says gently. She tightens the corset and Rey’s stomach jolts at the added pressure from the costume._

_“I guess it looks like I have tits now?” she says, glancing in the mirror. She’s always known that she has small breasts. She’s never been particularly bothered by it. But that doesn’t mean she wants her director commenting on it right as they’re about to take promo shots. Especially since she hasn’t even worked with Snoke yet._ Great first impression, _she thinks angrily at him._

_It’s magic hour, and they’ve decided to take photos outside, which means that Rey’s skin immediately bursts out into goosebumps when she leaves the warmth of the opera house. She sees Phasma and Hux talking by the fountain, Finn and Rose and Bebe are chatting happily and Kylo is standing there, looking very fine in his costume._

_“Hi,” she says, approaching him. It comes out a little breathier than she wants it to. She blames the corset._

_“Hey,” he says turning and he freezes, taking her in. “Nice costume.” She notices how intently he’s looking at her face and she can’t help but laugh._

_“Are they really that out there?”_

_“Yeah,” he says, flushing slightly and letting his gaze drop down for just a moment to her chest. “Yeah, they really are.”_

_“And I suppose the neckline is such that crossing my arms would only exacerbate the problem.”_

_“Hm?”_

_Her eyes widen but she can see he was joking about having been too intent on her breasts to listen to her and she smacks him across the chest._

_“Well, you can thank Snoke for it, he told them to tighten my corset.”_

_Kylo frowns and glances over to Snoke, who is talking with the photographer, a weedy looking man named Thannison._

_“He—” Kylo says before cutting himself off. He doesn’t look happy._

_“Is an asshole,” Rey says firmly._

_Kylo doesn’t say anything, which she chooses to take as a doesn’t disagree rather than a doesn’t agree. Instead, he looks at her. “You ok? Anything I can—”_

_“Fine,” she lies. He raises his eyebrows and she flushes because how is he this good at seeing through her lies? “There’s nothing you can do about his being a dick, can you? I’ll be fine. I’m just—it’s just—” He’s looking at her with those big soft brown eyes, the ones that are concerned about her more than not, the ones that make her feel like she can say anything to him, no matter what and he won’t mock her, he won’t belittle her. “I know that I don’t have breasts—I don’t need my director saying it to the costume designer as though I’m not even there. I’m a real person, and also a singer and…” No, she’s not going to say that. She’s really not going to whine out that she’s pretty like an insecure little girl. She doesn’t need him to echo it back to her._

_“You’re a very good singer,” he says quietly. “And you look good in that costume, and would look just as good even if the corset were less tight.”_

_She swallows and her gaze drops to his chest. His shirt is loose, but not strung together over the top so she can see a hint of muscle where the neckline dips down in a deep v. “You don’t look too shabby yourself.”_

_She catches a flicker of a smile on his lips when she looks back up at him and hears a clicking of a camera. They both turn. Thannison is standing there. “Wanted to catch the moment,” he said. “Lovely and intimate. Shall we start with you two, then? Can you take her hands to your lips like you’re going to kiss them?”_

_He does, and Rey forgets to breathe._

❖

 _I_ _wish he weren’t so talented,_ Rose texts a group thread as Hux sings of his vendetta against Figaro. She is sitting in the back of the room. Snoke lets them sit in on rehearsals for scenes they are not in, so long as he is never made aware of their presence.

 _It would make life better, wouldn’t it?_ Bebe replies from wherever she is. Probably with Finn, if Rey had to guess.

“That will do,” Snoke tells Hux as the aria finishes and he nods to him. The man gives Rey a pointed smile as he passes her and Rey does her best to ignore it, especially since Snoke is already giving her directions for her entrance.

Rey is tall. She’s always stood in the back of class pictures, above the average height for women. But she’s _nothing_ on Phasma, who is over six feet tall and who looms over her.

“Rey,” Snoke says to her, “I know you need to be convinced to be in love with our leading man, but once again, I’ll remind you, the woman standing before you is trying to ruin your life by taking him away from you. Please be petty, please at least try to make the audience believe that you’re the better match for him, and not this greek goddess of a woman.”

Phasma is closer to Kylo’s height. She is icy cold where he is blazing heat. And Rey can’t even begin to fathom the two of them in love. But then again, six weeks ago, she wouldn’t have believed that she would be capable of caring for him.

Snoke’s words dig at her, true, but Phasma’s condescending smile that matches Hux’s so neatly is what makes Rey straighten her back. She thinks of Finn, thinks of every ounce of misery that Phasma has ever caused in him, cocks her head, and begins to sing.

❖

_“Why couldn’t you be my Figaro,” Rey moans quietly as they catch sight of Kylo Ren down the hall, talking angrily to someone that Rey can’t see. He may have the voice of an angel, but Rey has heard rumors about his personality, and seen some of it from afar. They are about to have their first full-cast rehearsal with Amilyn Holdo, the first time that she’ll be singing in front of the other principals. She should be nervous, but she somehow isn’t—possibly because she remembers Amilyn’s kind eyes from her audition._

_Finn loops his arm through hers and replies as he has every single time, “My bad genetics and Mozart’s lack of foresight that he really should have made Figaro a bari.”_

_“It can’t be_ that _hard to sing the low notes,” Rey grumbles at him._

 _“Not for an early morning performance, but unfortunately for us, operas tend not to be performed before two pm. You heard what happened to Ren when they made him sing baritone in_ Elektra _,” Rey sighs at him, and Finn quickly continues, “Don’t worry—we’ll have plenty of time together, and I’ll do my best to cockblock respectfully. Or at least, respectfully as far as Almaviva is concerned.”_

_They push into the rehearsal room, which is already full of chorus members, sitting in sections on risers, with a row of chairs in the front for principals._

_She catches the falter in Finn’s gait because their arms are still looped together when his eyes land on Phasma. For a moment, she thinks the other woman will ignore Finn as they cross the room and make their way to the farthest chairs from her that they can._

_“I was wondering if it wasn’t you,” Phasma says, her voice cool and her eyes cooler._

_“Here I am,” he replies stubbornly._

_Phasma shrugs and turns to Hux and Rey hears her say, not bothering to keep her voice down, “I knew when they brought Holdo on that there’d be changes, but good god the standards have fallen, haven’t they?”_

_“I’d bring it up to Snoke, but we both know he won’t care so long as Ren is in the show.”_

_Speak of the devil and he shall appear, and Kylo Ren storms into the room, taking the seat on Phasma’s other side, next to the young woman who had been cast to play Rosina. Were it not for the almost frightening rage rolling off him the size difference between the two of them would be almost comical, because Rose Tico is a good foot shorter than him, if not more._

_“You deserve to be here,” Rey tells Finn under her breath. “Ignore her.”_

_“Oh don’t worry,” he says, “I’m living my best life. She’s the one who hates that I’m here, which means I’m in charge now. Not Phasma._ I’m _in charge.”_

❖

Leia is already at the restaurant when Rey arrives, reading her way through the menu. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, her nails are gleaming as though they’d just been done that morning, and once again, she gives Rey a warm smile that _almost_ eases Rey out of the shame she feels about her relationship with Leia’s only child.

“What do you want?” Leia asks, nodding to the menu. “Lunch is on me.”

“Oh, no—I can’t let you—”

“Yes you can, and yes you should,” Leia says, still smiling at her, but there’s a steeliness to her gaze now. “I invited you, remember.”

Rey sucks her lips between her teeth and looks down at the menu. “In all honesty, I don’t know much about Chinese food,” she says.

“Then I’ll take care of it. You’re in safe hands,” Leia winks at her and leans back in her seat. “How has rehearsal been?”

“It’s been…” Even if her mind weren’t full of Kylo, she wouldn’t know where to start. With how uncomfortable Snoke makes her feel sometimes, how worthless, that she feels like she can’t sing, or can’t act, that everything gets muddled and she’s worried she’ll blow it and then be stuck in a world that’s particularly hard for artists. And as her mind swirls with her nerves, Leia’s face takes on an understanding expression and Rey suddenly realizes she doesn’t have to say any of it at all.

“It’s overwhelming,” Leia tells her. “I remember that too.”

“Did you ever feel that everything was falling apart, and that there was nothing you could do to stop it?”

“Constantly,” Leia replies and her eyes mist over slightly. “Still to this day, sometimes. It can be very isolating.”

 _You’re not alone,_ Kylo had told her, and she’d reached for his hand, squeezing it just as tightly as she’d ever squeezed anyone’s hand.

“It’s important to remember you’re not alone,” Leia tells her and Rey wonders if that’s where Kylo had gotten it, if his mother had told him that sometimes. Not that it had mattered, in the end for him. He pretends he doesn’t have a mother. “And, more importantly, that you’re not the first to do this, nor will you be the last.”

The waiter swings by and Leia hands him a card on which she’s marked the dishes they’re ordering and he disappears. Rey doesn’t know what to say. She hates not knowing what to say. But something about Leia’s entire family…both Luke and Kylo have left her speechless, why should Leia be any different?

“I wanted to have lunch with you today for a few reasons,” Leia says at last. “The first is to make sure you know that—that you’re not alone. It’s a hard life, being a woman in this world, and if you’d like, I’d love to offer myself to you as a resource, as a mentor of sorts. I know it’s been a while since I’ve been on the stage, but I have a lot to bring to the table about the opera community writ large.”

“You run a company,” Rey hears herself say. She’d heard that—from Finn, she thinks. Poe works for Leia Organa now, after leaving City Opera.

“I do,” Leia says. “Don’t worry—I’m not trying to poach you, though if you’re interested I definitely wouldn’t say no. We’re not the Met, but we do some good, interesting productions. Smaller ones. And community work.” Leia takes a sip of her tea. “But that’s exactly what I mean—if there’s ever something that makes you feel as though you don’t have options, that you are trapped with…” Leia takes a deep breath. “I don’t like Snoke. I don’t trust him. He’s one of the biggest names in this city, maybe even in the world when it comes to opera, but I don’t like his method, his philosophy, or his productions in particular. I’ve heard stories about him that I find…” her voice trails away and Rey wonders if she’s thinking about Kylo. Vividly, Rey remembers the way that Snoke had rubbed the back of his neck after one of their rehearsals, the way that Kylo had stiffened at his touch.

“The trouble,” Leia begins again after a moment, “is that powerful men think they can do anything they want. Especially powerful male artists, who think that their art will, ultimately, shine so brightly that everything else will be lost in the shadow. Snoke is one such man. He doesn’t treat people well, doesn’t see their humanity, and I don’t understand how you can be an artist if you don’t understand humanity, if you only see art as an avenue to power—and he does like to exert his power.”

“He does,” Rey says quietly, thinking of Finn.

“Amilyn really likes you,” Leia says and Rey’s throat tightens. Amilyn has always seemed professional, distant, though the more that Leia talks, the more Rey wonders if that isn’t because she’s doing her best to fly under Snoke’s radar. “And I don’t want Snoke to chew you up and spit you out.”

“He’s not going to,” Rey replies at once. Oddly—for everything that she’s sensed, everything that she’s just heard Leia tell her—it’s not Snoke she’s afraid of at all. “I won’t let him.”

Leia’s eyes shine with pride that makes Rey feel taller, despite the fact that the two are sitting down. She feels like she could sing louder, like she could run faster because of that look in Leia’s eyes.

“Good,” Leia tells her. “Yes. Very good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skip the paragraph that begins with: "His face darkens"


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's been grueling and I am sorry I haven't had time to get to your reviews yet. I will I promise! In the meanwhile, enjoy!
> 
> Endnotes contain opera links. Rey does get triggered in this chapter, and I've popped the context of it in the endnotes as well.

That night finds Rey downtown with Finn in a Mexican restaurant. The plan had been to get some tacos before seeing a movie with Poe and then turning in early. The plan had changed when Rey had learned they had five dollar tequila drinks that night, and had proposed a counterplan of getting thoroughly plastered.

 _We don’t have to sing tomorrow,_ she texts the group thread, which elicits a _YOU don’t have to sing tomorrow._

_They’re high schoolers, Poe._

_I’m trying to be a good role model. I don’t want to show up with my voice blasted._

_Can’t you just make them sing?_ Finn suggests, _What’s the point of being a conductor if you’re the one who has to sing all the time?_

_As Rey pointed out, they’re high schoolers. They can’t sight-sing. I have to demo like 60% of the time._

_Poe it’s really good tequila._

_Make your pianist play the lines and wear sunglasses,_ is Bebe’s recommendation, _You’ll look cool if you wear sunglasses._

There’s no response for a few minutes and they half-expect Poe to have powered down his phone for the movie, abandoning them to their drinks.

And then,

_This place is packed where are you?_

_Table at the back._

And a moment later Poe Dameron has arrived, his hair a little longer than when Rey had last seen him, and waving in a nice sort of way. “You’ll be the death of me,” he tells them both, shrugging out of his jacket and sliding onto the bench against the wall next to Rey.

“Someone’s got to remind you you’re not _that_ old,” Finn points out to him.

“As if the lady doesn’t do that,” Poe grumbles.

“Ok, so she’s older than you,” Bebe points out with a tone of rapt attention and that devious glint in her eye that she gets only around people she trusts—the people around whom she feels comfortable turning into a complete demon. Poe flushes. He’s been remarkably tight-lipped about his most recent foray into the world of monogamy.

“At some point you’re going to have to tell us about her,” Finn tells him.

“I really don’t,” Poe says.

“What, are you ashamed?”

“No—don’t want to jinx it.”

“It’s been what, four months. Are you really that afraid of jinxing it?”

“It’s a good relationship.”

“With an older woman,” Rey says, taking a sip of her margarita. This detail has caught her by surprise for some reason she can’t understand. Or rather—one she can, and is trying desperately not to place any weight on whatsoever. None at all.

“Age is a construct after a certain point,” Poe says, clearly trying to sound mature. “And I like her for a lot of reasons and those don’t have to be tied to age, do they?”

The waitress shows up, and Poe a mojito and tries valiantly to change the subject.

“How’s rehearsal going. Snoke ok?”

“He’s horrible,” Finn replies without missing a beat. “But that’s not really a shocker, after _Elektra_.”

Poe nods understandingly. “But still—exciting to finally be front and center, isn’t it?”

“Trying to focus on that,” Rey says.

“What _happened?_ ” Finn asks without missing a beat, his tone clearly pointing to Kylo and not Snoke.

“Listen, just drop it,” Rey retorts.

“It’s been over a week and it’s still eating at you.”

“I’m missing something,” Poe said.

“Look, if we don’t make Poe talk about _his_ love life, mine should also be off the table.”

“Yeah, but his love life isn’t related to our professional life, ok? This is.”

“And I’m handling it, ok?”

Poe watches them argue across the table, turning his head back and forth as though he’s watching a tennis match. “Do _you_ have any idea what they’re talking about?” he asks Bebe.

“I bet you anything Rey fucked Kylo and it was bad,” Bebe says. “They were clearly going in for it, and then they weren’t.”

There’s no _I told you so_ in her voice, no glee, no relief, which almost makes Rey feel worse. It means she’s noticed just how deeply cut up about it Rey’s been and is _trying_ to be gentle about it _._ But that pales to Rey’s relief that Finn doesn’t seem to care about the fucking Kylo part. He had probably guessed that, too.

The relief is short-lived, however. Poe’s face goes almost slack and he stares at Rey.

“Really?” he asks her quietly.

“Look—it’s none of anyone’s business how I—”

“The guy’s a murderer, Rey.”

❖

_“Did you hate your father?” She doesn’t mean to ask it, it just sort of slips out._

_His head jerks up so quickly that it’s as though she’d stung him and his eyes are guarded._

_“Why?” he asks slowly, then, before she can answer, “Oh. Of course.” Because she’d told him before that she knew he’d killed Han Solo._

_Rey decides on the truth. She can still remember the blistering anger in Poe’s eyes as he’d raged about Kylo, as he’d told him of how he’d broken his mother’s heart into nineteen pieces and how Snoke was the only eyewitness to what had really happened._ We all know he did it, though, _Poe had said fiercely and—at the time—Rey had wanted,_ needed _to believe him._

_Now, though…_

_“I didn’t hate him,” Kylo says at last. “I just didn’t feel like he was my father, you know?”_

_Rey considers. “No. I don’t know.”_

_He rubs the back of his fingers over her shoulder—an apology, she thinks. He knows she was raised in foster care, even if she hasn’t told him too much about Unkar. “I—I think…my parents they never got me. My mom tried. My dad…he just sort of wrote off the things that mattered to me. Wrote me off. I don’t know. It comes off whiney. Maybe it is. But he didn’t feel like my dad by the end—the way he did when I was a kid, I mean. He felt like my dad when I was a kid. But he felt like a stranger at the end who thought he knew me but didn’t.”_

_“Do you miss him?” Rey asks quietly._

_“Do you miss your parents?” he shoots back and she glares at him._

_“That’s different.”_

_“Yeah, but it still hurts, doesn’t it? For people to assume they know everything just because they know what a dad should be like, right? I didn’t hate my dad. Didn’t love him either. He just was. And then everywhere I went, people wished I’d be him and I’m not—not even close, for all we sound alike when we sing.”_

_He’s rambling a bit, his gaze distant._

_“But no. No I didn’t hate him.”_

What was it like, watching him die? _But Rey’s not brave enough to ask that question—not by a mile. Because she can tell that it hurts him more than he’s letting on. She can tell. She can always recognize when someone else is pretending they’re all right._

❖

“Says you,” Rey retorts.

Poe’s face splits with derision. “And now you’re defending him killing his dad.”

“I am _not_ defending him,” Rey retorts. “I just—”

She cuts herself off. There’s no way she can go into this without giving too much away.

“Can we get another round for the table?” Bebe asks the waitress, who is passing, “And some more guac?”

Poe is watching her. So is Finn. Bebe is looking at her phone, clearly pretending not to be watching Rey.

“Look, it doesn’t matter, ok?” Rey asks. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Because you don’t care?” Poe’s voice is hard.

“Because it’s _over_ , Poe. Because it didn’t work. And it’s really awkward because he’s my Figaro, but hopefully after this season, we’ll never be opposite each other again and we can just forget anything ever happened.”

“Kylo Ren holds a grudge,” Poe says with the voice of a man who also holds a grudge.

“Then that’s a good thing, because it’ll just mean that—” That he’ll hate her forever.

She can’t even blame him for that.

She tries to take another sip of her margarita but it’s empty and she only gets flavored ice. Internally, she blesses Bebe’s foresight because a moment later, the waitress is back and Rey has more alcohol.

“So Finn,” Bebe asks with the air of someone who is trying to change the subject. “When are you and Rose going to become a thing do you think?”

Finn chokes on his drink. “ _What_?”

“I’m just saying, she’s into you.”

“She’s not into me,” Finn replies. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why do I get the sense she’s just going for a hat-trick of getting us all awkward about our love lives?” Rey asks.

“I’m a demon, what can I say?” Bebe asks. “No, but seriously, have you seen how she looks at you?”

“She’s playing my lovelorn wife. She’s supposed to—”

“When you’re not rehearsing, though. Have you seen it?”

“Can we not do this?” Finn asks, looking between Poe and Rey. “How’re the Yankees doing this year?”

“We don’t do sports,” Rey says, rolling her eyes at the same time that Poe says, “The season’s over. They didn’t make it to the World Series.”

❖

_“What are you listening to?” she asks him as he pulls an earbud out._

_“Vader in Aida_ _.”_

_Rey had heard of Vader before, but had never actually listened to a recording of him. It must be quite old. Kylo extends an earbud to her and she suddenly hears an intense tenor._

_“He’s good,” she says, looking up at Kylo. He’s standing very close to her and she has to peek up at him through her lashes he’s so tall._

_“Yeah,” Kylo says. “I only started listening to him in the past few years.”_ After your father died, _Rey understands. “My mom—she hates him. And he was a fucked up guy but—“ he takes a deep shuddering breath as though daring Rey to berate him for what he’s about to say “—but that’s art.”_

_“I don’t know much about him,” Rey confesses._

_“He’s my grandfather,” Kylo says quietly._

_And Rey hears so much in his voice—more reverence, more wonder at that fact than he’d ever shown for his father._

_“Why does your mother hate him?” Rey asks quietly. Vader’s voice is so smooth in her ear, so controlled, so powerful._

_“He was never convicted, but he killed my grandmother.”_

_Rey opens her mouth and then closes it again. She doesn’t want to know if he started listening to Vader, started caring about his grandfather because he, too, had killed._

❖

One round of refills turns into a second, into a third, and by the time Rey’s halfway through her fourth margarita, she is very pleased with this counterplan of hers that they get thoroughly plastered.

Not least because, time is starting to skip around and they end up in Union Square—it’s really not as cold as she had thought it would be, though maybe that’s because she has alcohol to keep her warm—and Finn and Poe are being the most perfectly obnoxious singers and are singing “Al Fato Dan Legge Quegli Occhi” together loudly, slurring and out of tune.

“Does it feel like you’re boning your mom?” Bebe asks Poe when they settle down on a bench in.

“What? Ew.” Finn says loudly

“You said she was older than you,” Bebe says, her eyes bright as she stares at Poe. “How much older?”

“My mom’s dead, so no, it’s not like boning my mom,” Poe slurs at her, and Rey, through her drunken haze, realizes that this is probably why Bebe had paid for so many of the rounds. Because Poe’s lips, when he’s drunk, get a bit loose. _Don’t say anything if Bebe asks,_ Rey pleads with herself. _Please just keep your mouth shut._

“So she’s old enough to be your mom?” Bebe asks.

“I didn’t say that,” Poe says, but he’s got this confused look in his eyes as though he’s wondering if he did, and Bebe goes in for the kill.

“Is this you acting on your lack-of-mommy issues?”

“This is me finding an incredible woman attractive, and wanting to do right by her, and if that’s being her younger boy-toy, then that’s what it is.”

“So you’re her boy-toy?”

“I’d like to think I’m more than just her boy-toy,” Poe says. “I was,” he waves his finger around in the air in front of Bebe’s face before pressing it against her sternum, “joking.”

“Still not convinced it’s not mommy issues,” Bebe mutters to Rey. “Everyone’s got ‘em. You probably do.”

“How do you know that? How do you know I don’t have daddy issues?”

Rey could beat up her dumb mouth and her dumber brain for thinking that drinking instead of going to see a period drama about World War I was a good idea.

Luckily, Bebe only laughs.

“You probably have those too. Is that what went wrong with Kylo? Wanted to call him daddy in bed?”

Rey chokes and Poe makes a loud noise. “I don’t want to think about _Kylo Ren_ ,” he says the name with a mocking tone, “in bed, if you please.”

“Why—worried he’ll come after your mommy issues?”

“Do you really think Rose likes me?” Finn asks as though he hasn’t been paying attention to any of this. Which is likely, because Finn’s always been an introspective drunk.

“Yes,” Bebe says at the same time that Poe says, “No idea,” and Rey sits and stares at the statue of George Washington, her mind full of Kylo. Kylo, and the way he’d looked when she’d helped him out of his shirt, and he’d had muscles for days and her breath had caught in her throat and fuck fuck fuck she’s not supposed to think about him like this she and her drunk brain need to have better coordination.

She’s not paying attention to Poe’s gesticulation and so she doesn’t notice the way his hand is moving towards her until it’s too late. He smacks her—lightly, yes—but he smacks her across the stomach and—

Rey snarls at him.

“Fuck off,” she says, leaping to her feet.

“What?” Poe looks confused.

“ _Don’t touch me_ ,” Rey snaps, and there are tears in her eyes and she’s back in her foster father’s kitchen and his fist is hitting her in the stomach. Her hands have balled themselves under the sleeves of her coat and she’s wrapping her arms around her midriff and stumbling away from Poe, Finn, and Bebe.

“Rey!” Finn calls after her and she stumbles over a crack in the ground and Finn’s hand is wrapping around her upper arm, keeping her from falling to the ground. “Hey,” he says quietly as she straightens and looks at him. “Hey, it’s ok. You’re safe.”

Which is true.

She also is feeling significantly less drunk than she had moments before, as though Poe’s hand on her stomach, her reaction, had chased away the alcohol-haze.

“I’m going home,” she tells Finn.

“Rey,” he begins, and Poe and Bebe are standing behind him now.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean it,” Poe tells her, but Rey just waves at them and turns her way towards the entrance to the subway.

She feels cold again, in a way that has nothing to do with the weather or the alcohol.

❖

_“Does it ever creep you out—the way he keeps touching you?”_

_Kylo stiffens next to her. He had been tracing little circles on the small of Rey’s back that she could feel even through the layers she’s wearing as though his hand were burning right through them. He knows which_ he _Rey is referring to. There can only be one_ he _._

_“Look,” he says slowly. “I know you don’t like him.”_

_“I really don’t like him.”_

_“And that’s fine,” he continues._

_“It’s not fine, but whatever.”_

_“It’s a generational thing, ok? He’s a lot older than he looks but that’s just how he—”_

_“Shows affection?” Rey asks a little dryly. On her back, Kylo’s hand stops rubbing it’s circles. But he hasn’t retracted it yet._

_“Yeah,” he says and she can practically feel the defensiveness dripping from his voice his voice. “I know it’s not professional, but he’s a mentor, and he’s been there for me, helped me.”_

More than you’ve let your family help you, _Rey thinks. He hates his uncle, but she remembers how angry Poe had been about the way that Kylo slammed the door in Leia’s face. Not for the first time, she wonders what Snoke might have seen on that subway platform, what he might be hiding from the world on Kylo _’_ s behalf._

_“He’s been like a father to me,” he says quietly. “I’ve needed that. And yeah, the touching is not ideal. And I don’t really like it. But it’s how he shows affection and I’d rather have the affection than not, you know?”_

_“Yeah,” Rey says and she leans her head against his shoulder. “Yeah, I get that.” She does. She doesn’t like it, doesn’t understand it, but she does get it. His hand starts to circle again and she almost sighs._

_Poe says that he pushed him right down onto the tracks and then a train hit him. And as angry as Rey had been when Poe had first told her, as much as she’d hated him for doing it, Rey finds now that she can’t believe that. She really can’t. Not when they’re standing there, waiting for the train and his hand is_ right there _and there’s nothing murderous about him at all. Not even a little bit. He’s warm, and kind, and he only seems to show that to her because he trusts her with it, trusts her to trust it when everyone else just looks at him like he’s some sort of monster._

_She tilts her head up to look at him and it’s as though he can read her mind, the way that he bends down and brushes his lips against hers, so tantalizing. They’re going back to his place. They’re going back to his place and Rey knows what that means, and he knows what that means, and she’s not afraid of having sex with him—no matter what Bebe and Finn and Poe would say. They don’t understand. Kylo wouldn’t let them understand. They wouldn’t understand why he wouldn’t let them understand. Swirls and swirls and swirls of complications and the only thing that Rey can really care about is that they’re getting on the train together, and he gives her the one open seat and stands over her, resting one hand on the railing overhead for balance and he looks at her like she’s the only person in the world to ever matter to him._

❖

 _I_ _am so hungover this is all your fault._

Rey sees the text from Poe between stumbling to the bathroom to vomit herself. She hadn’t expected to be hungover when she’d gotten home the night before, still feeling oddly sober and cold.

 _Sunglasses make you look cool,_ is Bebe’s reply.

Rey’s tactic is burying her face in her pillow and willing herself back to sleep.

She _hates_ feeling sick to her stomach. She hates being reminded she has a stomach at all. She hates that even as she’d been retching herself, she doesn’t even have enough food in her stomach to vomit up.

That’s familiar at least.

Around noon, she cooks herself some eggs and toast and feels a little better.

It’s always better when there’s food in her stomach.

❖

_“If you keep eating the bread, you’re not gonna have room for all the food you ordered,” Kylo says, a mild twinkle to his eyes as he gives her a crooked smile._

_“Watch me,” Rey says, swiping up more olive oil with the fresh-baked bread that the restaurant had provided while they were waiting for dinner._

_“It’ll expand in your stomach and there’ll be less room for—”_

_“Listen Kylo Ren—I’ve never been confronted with a pile of food I couldn’t eat. I can eat as much as a horse. I have a second stomach like a cow and can digest multiple meals at once.”_

_“You’re the first woman I’ve ever encountered who’s willingly likened herself to a cow.”_

_“Cows are wonderful creatures,” Rey sniffs, taking another bite of bread._

_“True,” he agrees, still smiling as he looks at her._

_“And it’s not_ my _problem certainly that men call women animals as a mechanism of devaluing, thereby belittling both,” Rey continues, waving her crust in his face. “Cows deserve respect. As do women.”_

_Kylo doesn’t say a word, but he does lift his wine glass in a toast that Rey cheerses with her crust of bread. The gesture makes him laugh._

_“You have a beer bottle,” he says, nodding to it._

_“Yeah, but it’s all grains anyway.”_

_She likes the way he’s smiling at her. She likes the way he seems proud of her for having a bottomless pit of a stomach, rather than disgusted. She likes how she feels almost hopeful looking at him, that she feels warm and safe and that there’s a ton of pasta coming their way. She has food on her table and music in her heart and she doesn’t know if she knows how to express how much that means to her, but if she tried, she’s sure Kylo would understand._

_He seems to understand so much. She had really gotten the wrong impression of him, hadn’t she? So what if Poe thinks he’s a murderer, thinks that Snoke lied to the police about what he’d seen on that train platform. He can’t have done that. He can’t have killed Han Solo. Han Solo was his_ father _. She’s sitting across the table from Han Solo’s son, and he’s taking her out to dinner._

_“I—” she starts to say._

_She what, though?_

_She feels her face heating, as Kylo cocks his head, curiously. But she doesn’t have to come up with anything because a moment later her gnocchi has arrived—as has Kylo’s ravioli and they’re digging into their food with gusto._

❖

Finn drifts into the living room about an hour after Rey, his face a bit slack, flinching a little at the brightness of their curtainless living room. “There’s coffee in the pot,” Rey tells him before he says anything and he nods vaguely and drifts towards the kitchen. She hears the sound of him turning on a burner, and, a few minutes later, him pouring his coffee.

He joins her in the living room, eggs on toast on a plate in his hands which he sets himself to eating—not so much with gusto but with the air of a man who is doing what he must.

“We should have seen that movie last night,” he grumbles at last.

“Probably would have been wise,” Rey agrees and he leans over sideways on the couch and rests his head on her shoulder.

“You ok?” he asks her after a moment.

“Yeah,” she replies and that’s that. That’s Finn, and she loves him for it, for checking in on her, and for trusting her to know herself. Oh, he’ll dig in about her love life, sure, but he trusts her with holding herself together. _Exactly the opposite of Kylo,_ she thinks a little bitterly. As if she hadn’t been enthralled by his ability to hit the nail on the head with her, to dig his heels in and demand a level of honesty that she never gave herself.

That was probably why all this hurt so much. If she’d just been more honest with herself...

Finn finishes his eggs and toast and coffee, they try watching an episode of _30 Rock_ , which they’ve been making their way through, slowly before deciding they are both far too hungover for it and they both return to their respective bedrooms to try and sleep.

Rey burrows her way under blankets towards the steam heater that pipes its way along the wall. Little about her childhood is comforting for her, but the memory of warmth, of dry overbearing warmth, is. She can handle heat far better than she can handle cold.

That’s the trouble.

Kylo’s heat hadn’t damaged her anywhere near as much as this cold. And it wasn’t as though she could even begin to blame him for it.

 _It’s not like your parents,_ she tells herself. _You didn’t drive them away, even if you think you did._

But even the thought of parents makes her stomach roll uncomfortably, given her state of hangover, and so she does her best to think about something—anything—else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The links SJS sent me when I was like “halp I need opera halp” were:
> 
>   * [The Verdi Aida piece](https://www.amazon.com/Verdi-Tenor-Arias-4-CDs/dp/B0015T7GN4)
>   * “[Al Fato Dan Legge Quegli Occhi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbvNba-NXz4)” 
> 

> 
> Rey gets physically triggered in this chapter. She was physically abused growing up and has strong reactions whenever anyone touches her stomach, which Poe does by accident. Paragraph begins with: “She’s not paying attention to Poe’s gesticulation...” and proceeds (roughly) for the rest of the snippet until the break.


	4. Chapter 4

“Come now, come now. Put some energy into it,” Snoke says, cutting them off. “That was the least convincing stage slap I’ve ever seen.”

Rey turns immediately away from Kylo, breathing heavily. It is much easier to act as though she is angry at him than that she is in love with him, especially after the miserable lonely corner her drunken and hungover mind had taken her to that weekend. It is easier to channel her pain and upset into that and not once has Snoke made a comment that she is unbelievable in this scene—at least, not until now.

“He is very tall,” Phasma says dryly from where she’s standing behind Kylo.

“Got it from you, didn’t he mummy?” quips Hux. “Maybe you should bend down, son, to make it easier for her,” Hux sneers and Kylo glares at him.

“Just slap him. Stage slaps look fake anyway,” Snoke says idly, looking down at his score and it’s not until he’s looked up that Rey realizes that she’s said, loudly and sternly, “No.”

“No?”

“No,” she replies.

“Come now,” he says, laughing. “I’ve seen the pair of you in rehearsal. I know you want to slap him. Just slap him, it’ll be—”

“Inappropriate,” Rey replies firmly, her hands dropping to her hips. She turns to Kylo whose eyes—

His eyes are usually an open book, emotions constantly there. But right now, his gaze is unreadable.

Rey will worry about _that_ later, though, she decides as she says, “We can practice after this session. Make it look believable.”

Snoke snorts. “Will wonders never cease—Rey Johnson willingly putting herself in Kylo Ren’s presence. All to avoid slapping him.”

“An opportunity missed. The boy could use a slap, and I say that as his father,” Rey hears Hux hiss to Phasma.

If Snoke hears it, he ignores it. “Very well then, continue.”

They start again: a celebration at the discovery of Figaro’s long-lost mother—whom he had been on the verge of being forced to marry—and the joy that he is free, once again, to marry the love of his life. And when Kylo sweeps Rey into his arms, she loses him in his character for a moment, loses herself in the sensation of literally being swept off her feet and spun around while he looks at her with a guarded joy. He holds her gaze for a moment, his arms still around her, still holding her so that their faces are level, so that their lips are close enough to touch. And Rey remembers the last time he held her this close and feels a familiar heat flood her, a different heat than the one that had filled her so frequently of late. There’s no simmering shame now, no humiliation. Just her heart pattering in her chest, faster and faster as she looks into his eyes. They’re so rich, his eyes.

“You should defend him more often, Rey. I almost believed you loved each other,” Snoke comments when they’re done and the moment shatters, Kylo won’t look at her anymore. “Go practice slapping him. We’ll run this one again later in the week.”

Hux, Phasma, and Snoke depart and Rey stands there, willing Kylo to look at her.

When he does, his eyes are unreadable again.

“Right,” he says businesslike. “I do think it’d help for you to hit me. If only to get the angle of the motion right.”

“I’m not going to hit you, Kylo,” Rey says firmly.

He rolls his eyes. “Snoke’s not here. You don’t have to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending anything,” she retorts. Her skin is hot and cold and she can feel her stomach clenching with nerves. _Fight or flight,_ she realizes belatedly. _He’s not going to hit you though. He’s not._

“You don’t have to hit me hard,” he says. He sounds almost amused, almost sneering as he looks at her.

“I’m not going to,” she replies.

“Why not? Don’t tell me you haven’t wanted to. Trust me, this won’t hurt me as much as—”

“Maybe not you, but I don’t hit people. I’m not my foster father.”

The words just slip out of her. She doesn’t mean to say them. That seems to be a horrifying trend in her relationship with Kylo, and one that hasn’t changed at all.

And his face opens again, and she sees him processing and she braces herself, for the pity or the outrage, or the whatever it is that comes whenever she lets this one slip.

“That’s why you don’t like it when your stomach—”

“Yeah,” she snaps. Now it’s her turn to be embarrassed. She’d told him that she’d hated her foster father. He’d been gentle at that. He understands what it was to hate fathers, after all.

And what she sees, as she glares up at her, almost makes her heart stop. His eyes soften, grow clouded with confusion, and then harden again. Rey’s mouth goes dry. They hadn’t hardened organically. She knows what it looks like when someone is reminding themselves not to think something painful. She knows it all too well.

She should. She’s seen it in the mirror for the past week and a half.

 _Maybe he doesn’t hate me as much as I thought,_ she thinks, hardly daring to wonder, hardly daring to hope. And then, her own habit kicks in.

 _Give him time. Wait,_ she thinks, and even manages to think. _It won’t be like your parents. This is different. You can wait for this._ So maybe it won’t be like before, but it is something. A big something. Something very, very steadying.

“Right,” Kylo says at last. “Well, then—if you’re not going to hit me, we need to figure out the right angle…” his voice trails away.

“Yeah,” Rey says, and Kylo raises his hands. “And timing,” she adds.

And they begin.

❖

_“I grew up in the foster system,” she tells him. “And my guardian—he was all smiles and the epitome of good parenting when my social worker came by, but he—” she swallows. “I don’t like thinking about him. I haven’t spoken to him since I turned eighteen. He kicked me out of the house the second he wasn’t being paid to take care of me anymore, a few months before I started conservatory.”_

_“You didn’t have a place to stay?”_

_“Oddly, homelessness was easier than being in his house,” she mumbles._

_Kylo’s arm is around her shoulder and he’s pulling her to his chest._

_“Anyway,” she says. “I don’t like thinking about it all. I don’t like thinking about him, or my parents, or any of it. I’m more than what any of them thought I could be.”_

_“You are,” Kylo agrees. He kisses her forehead, he kisses her lips, he holds her until she’s stopped shaking because she is shaking. She shakes and cries every time she thinks about it._

_Sometimes she wonders if—because she hadn’t let herself cry for the first eighteen years of her life—she is making up for it now because she feels like she cries over everything now._

_She rubs her face against his black peacoat and he runs a hand up and down her spine, comforting her._

_This is what it feels like to be supported by someone. She knows that. Finn had taught that to her, and Bebe. She knows it down in her soul also because she hadn’t had it for so long. She’d had to be her own support for so long._

_Idly, as her breathing steadies, she wonders if he knows how much it means to her, to have him listen, to have him exist as living proof that she is not alone._

❖

When they had left the restaurant, standing on the curb outside as Leia enjoyed a cigarette and waited for her Lyft, Leia had told Rey that she should call or text her whenever she wanted. “I know you don’t think I mean it,” Leia had said, smoke curling out of her nose and lips, “But I do. I really do.”

Rey stares at Leia’s contact information all the way from Columbus Circle until she gets off the A. _This is exactly the sort of thing that Leia meant,_ she tells herself. Snoke telling her to slap a costar, her refusal to do so, the anxiety that had crawled into the pit of her stomach the moment she and Kylo had finished practicing their stage slaps, both feeling decently satisfied with the timing and resonance of it.

But she can’t bring herself to do it.

Leia had not brought up Kylo once during their dim sum lunch together. She’d talked about Amilyn, and Snoke, and her youthful experience with her brother and with her late husband, but never once had she mentioned the son that she would know that Rey was starring opposite. _Does she worry about him?_ Rey wonders, staring at the name on her screen. It was Kylo who had cut off contact, after all. He’d cut off contact with his mother, as he would surely have done with Rey if he’d had his druthers. For all she knows, Leia worries daily about her only child, wonders if he is happy, healthy, stable—all the things that Rey is increasingly sure that her parents don’t ever think about.

Once, she’d hoped that they’d be back for her, had filled herself with blind faith that they would be. Time and friends who had gently pointed out facts that Rey hadn’t wanted to acknowledge had meant she’d begun to loosen her grip on that hope. She’d lost herself in opera recordings of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa instead.

But Han Solo is dead, and Luke had managed to make her feel small in a way she hadn’t since she’d left Plutt’s house. But Leia…

 _Is she putting energy into me because her son won’t let him near her?_ she wonders. Amilyn has clearly been reporting back to Leia—maybe Leia is hoping that Rey will too, now that rehearsals are more completely in Snoke’s hands. Maybe Amilyn had told her about the way that Rey and Kylo looked at one another as they sang, not knowing that as she handed them over to Snoke for blocking, that they would break that bond most spectacularly. _Give him time,_ she reminds herself. Maybe he’d wanted to cut off contact, but it is a choice he’s not as settled on as he thought. She’d seen that much in his eyes. She can wait. She’s good at waiting, she can wait for this too. It might even make rehearsals bearable—if she thinks about it as waiting for him to handle his shit, rather than hoping in vain that he’ll forgive her for something she hadn’t intended.

❖

_“I want your voices to sink into one another,” Amilyn tells them, cutting them off again, Geno’s fingers on the piano halting the moment she starts to speak. “You have such wonderful blend together, and it should be clear as a bell, but Kylo you’re singing a little loud and Rey you’re a little too quiet. Listen to one another. Balance.”_

_Rey nods and Amilyn’s sharp blue eyes dart between them. “It might help if you actually looked at each other rather than at me,” she says dryly. “I know you both already know this. Let’s take it from the top. Scores away. Eye contact please.”_

_It’s a nightmare._

_Kylo’s voice is as familiar as it ever has been, so very like his father’s, enveloping her completely while her voice dances above his—bass and soprano, the framework of music. They sound like framework, and when they land their harmonies the whole room seems to vibrate around them. It’s almost magical, so close to perfect._

_She focuses on the sound of his voice and hers, and when the song ends, their eyes remain locked. Rey wonders if he can feel the way she’s feeling right now, if his heart is in his throat, if he feels a little more awake, a little more alive just because of how they’ve sounded together, how their voices blend so perfectly they sound like one person instead of two._

❖

Rey is walking along Central Park West towards the train when she hears Poe calling to her. She pauses and turns and sees him hurrying towards her his hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket. She gives him a smile. “Hey!”

“Hey,” he says, a little breathless, his voice quiet. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about last weekend. I didn’t—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rey tells him, shrugging. “I just had a reaction is all.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“You’re fine,” she tells him firmly. “I was the one who couldn’t handle my shit.” She can handle so much shit, she really can. And she’ll get there with this particular reaction too. Time makes things better. She believes that. “How’d your rehearsal go?”

He grins and groans. “Leia was observing me, so it was mildly catastrophic,” he says. “But luckily she found it amusing. Said…” his voice trails away and his eyes are now past Rey.

“Said he reminded me of Han,” Leia says and Rey starts. She hadn’t noticed the woman approaching, but recovers quickly and gives her a smile and a wave. Leia’s got a cigarette between her pointer and middle finger and is wearing heels that almost make her close to Rey’s height. “Han used to show up still drunk to rehearsal. Poe said it was your fault.”

“It was,” Rey says at once, hoping that undoes some of the apparently minimal damage. “We found five dollar tequila drinks down near Union Square.”

“Then I can hardly blame you. Just as I can hardly blame myself for getting Han drunk in the first place.” She winks at Rey.

“My my, isn’t this quite the gathering?”

And Rey’s skin starts to crawl because she’d been caught off guard by Poe’s voice, and by Leia’s, and now there’s Snoke, coming down the sidewalk as well with Kylo at his side.

Kylo’s entire face is rigid and his gaze is on Poe, which Rey can only assume is because he doesn’t want to look at her and doesn’t want to acknowledge his mother. Poe’s face hardens under Kylo’s gaze but he doesn’t look away. It is as though the two are daring the other to break first.

“Snoke,” Leia says coolly.

“Leia,” Snoke replies evenly. “How’s your little endeavor coming along? I read a review last year that your _Four Saints_ was a little underwhelming. Tragic, I must say.”

“We’re doing fine, thank you,” Leia says easily.

“Fully funded?” Snoke asks and Leia’s eyes glint angrily. “Or are you paying out of pocket where necessary? I suppose you are lucky to have all that Organa money to do with as you please. And how is Luke?”

Next to Snoke, Kylo seems to stop breathing, but he’s still glaring at Poe in determination. Poe, though, has decided he doesn’t care about the glaring match and has turned to Leia, angling himself almost protectively between Snoke and the older woman.

“Luke’s Luke,” Leia replies. “I’m sure you could reach out to him if you liked.”

That makes Snoke laugh. “I shall have to remember to do that. He has been remarkably difficult to get hold of ever since your husband died.”

If the atmosphere had been uncomfortable before, it now gets downright frigid. Poe is glaring daggers back at Kylo, whose face has gone oddly blank as his eyes, for the first time, leave Poe and stare at his mother. Leia, as though she sensed his gaze, turns to look up at him but the moment she locks eyes with him, his face—already a little flushed from the cold—goes redder and his eyes dart to Rey, then—because she is sure he cannot stand to look at her in this particular context—back to Poe, then, at last, to Snoke.

“Everyone copes in their own way,” Leia says at last, her eyes, brighter than usual, still on her son.

“Quite,” Snoke says, his eyes—beady and blue—honing in on Leia. “To each their own.” His gaze flicks to Poe, and then, at last, to Rey. It’s as though he is stripping her down to her skin, down to her muscle and sinew with that gaze, as though he is seeing everything. _You will give me everything,_ he had said.

 _Did Kylo?_ She wonders and suddenly she is scared. She wants to reach for him, to protect him. If she protects him, she’ll be protecting herself, somehow—she can feel it.

But Snoke is saying, “Well, I won’t keep you,” and he moves past them towards Columbus Circle and Kylo seems to jerk himself out of a reverie to follow him. Rey watches them go, moving slowly to accommodate Snoke’s many aches and pains. As they reach Sixty First street, she sees Snoke pause, cough, and reach a hand out to grip Kylo’s upper arm for support. What a striking pair they make—both tall, both broad, one in black, one in tawny gold.

Leia doesn’t say anything for a long moment. She, too, is watching her son go. Out of the corner of her eye, Rey thinks she sees Poe rest a hand, briefly, on the small of her back before taking it away.

“Where’s five dollar tequila when you need it,” Leia says at last. She drops her cigarette—already burning down close to the filter—on the ground and stamps on it and forces a determined look on her face.

Rey wants to say something, anything that she can think of, to try and comfort her but it’s Poe who steps in and says, “Coffee may have to do.”

“Hmmm,” Leia hums and glances at Rey. “Would you like to join us?”

The question is a casual one, but Rey leaps at the invitation. Somehow, she knows, that if she goes home right now, she’ll only be able to think about the way that Kylo refused to look at her, the way that Snoke had leaned on him. She is sure that Leia will be thinking of it too and that is almost more painful.

Poe steers them both to a coffee shop just north of Lincoln Center which is packed with people. He manages to find them a table in the back corner and places their orders for them while Leia and Rey are both still lost in thought. It’s not until he has returned with Leia’s espresso and Rey’s espresso that Leia glances at him, smiles, and says, “I think I’ll keep him.”

Poe pinkens slightly and Rey glances between the two of them. Poe is determinedly avoiding her eyes, and it’s all Rey can do not to gape as she all her doubts fade about just _who_ Poe’s older lady is.

Leia takes a sip of her coffee then her eyes land on Rey. “A good part of why I hate Snoke is what he’s done to my son,” she says frankly. “I didn’t want you to think that was why I wanted to have lunch with you since I know you are starring opposite him, because it wasn’t, and it isn’t. But a good part of why I hate him…” she looks sadly down at her coffee, “is extremely personal.”

“I can imagine,” Rey says quietly. She’s not sure if she should tell Leia, even now, that Snoke had wanted her to hit her son, that he touches him in ways that seem to make Kylo go stiff.

“Ben…” Leia sighs, “That’s his name. Not Kylo. Kylo’s a stage name. Ben Organa Solo.” Her lisps twist in what looks like an attempt at a smile, but t really looks more like she is biting back tears, “Ben’s always had a…” Her voice trails away and her eyes are distant and Rey cuts in,

“You don’t have to explain anything. I—”

“Luke doesn’t like talking about it,” Leia continues as if she hadn’t heard Rey. “I think he blames himself. I blame myself. Han blamed himself. We all had some of the blame. And Ben…well, he was always too smart for his own good. It made him question the way he existed in the world, in our world, in our home, our family. And Snoke…Snoke found him like that and whispered exactly what Ben needed to hear to be…To become Kylo Ren, I suppose.”

Leia looks so very sad. “Snoke was there. When Han died. He was the only eye witness and the security footage didn’t catch what happened in that subway station. And I’ve always wondered if he hasn’t held it over Ben’s head—if something happened—if he—”

“Do you think he did it?” Rey asks Leia. She can’t help it. Kylo had always avoided any comment Rey had ever made about his father, the assumption that Poe had placed into her mind that he had actually killed him.

“Yes,” Leia says quietly. “I don’t know if it was an accident, or if it was that Snoke pushed his way too deep into my son, and I’ll never have him back, that I lost him, I failed him, and Han—”

“But then—” Rey asks, trying not to be rude, trying not to be angry, “Why don’t you hate him?”

“He’s my son,” Leia says simply and Rey wonders what it would be like—to have a mother who would forgive you the murder of your father because she loves you that much. “He’s my son, and what he is now—how much of it is my fault? Is Luke’s? Is Han’s? How can I blame him without blaming myself?”

“You didn’t kill your husband,” Poe points out forcefully.

“I did consider it more than once,” Leia says dryly and the joke catches Rey so off-guard that she can’t help but laugh. Leia smiles the sort of smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Then she sighs. “Maybe it would be different if I knew what happened, but it’s just Snoke’s word and I don’t trust that. So I know it’s more complicated than what I feel in my gut. I know it is.”

And Rey heard the desperation there—the _need_ to believe a truth that is other than what all evidence points towards. Rey recognizes it instantly.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endnotes contain no warnings, just my reaction at finally being able to post this chapter, so I wouldn't skip to it until you've read it.

__

_Are_ _you going to tell Finn?_

_Tell Finn what?_

_About me and Leia._

She stares at the words on her phone screen for a few moments. So that was the shape of it, then. She’d guessed right.

She doesn’t know Poe very well. He is very much Finn’s friend, met through a summer internship that Finn had done one year. She likes him well enough—thinks he can be a bit of a jackass sometime, but if anything is the truth, it’s that Rey can handle jackasses. He’s certainly less mercurial than Kylo.

_I wasn’t planning to. It’s yours to tell, for all we joked about wanting to know._

_I think you should tell him, though._

_Thanks. I appreciate it._

No response to her second text comes through.

Rey rolls her eyes. She doesn’t need to think about Poe Dameron’s choices in his friendship, not with everything else she has swirling around in her mind.

❖

“You two need to practice kissing the way you practiced slapping, I think,” Snoke says dryly halfway through a scene, his eyes on Rey. “I don’t think anyone could believe that you want your betrothed kissing you. I know that opera singers aren’t the best actors but this is getting a little ridiculous.”

Kylo doesn’t say a word. Of course he doesn’t. What could he possibly have to say? He is looking at a radiator in the back of the room—neither at Rey nor at Snoke, his normally full lips a thin line of distaste.

“Better do what he says,” she hears Hux say quietly, his voice full of glee. “Do you really think that just because Amilyn Holdo cast you, it’ll be enough to save your career if you don’t give Snoke what he wants? He didn’t even want to cast you.”

Rey ignores Hux. She knows he’s trying to get under her skin, trying to twist the knife in the wound. It is oddly freeing, not to care about what he says anymore. No— he can’t care about what he has to say, not when her mouth is dry, not when she doesn’t know what to even begin to say. She can’t say she’s surprised. Snoke’s been making snide comments about how she doesn’t seem like she’s in love with his precious Kylo since the day they’d started rehearsing together. But especially after the run-in on Central Park West a few days before, this feels more pointed than usual. He doesn’t seem to be joking, it doesn’t seem like a castaway comment. From the way his eyes are boring into her, she can tell he means every word.

When the scheduled slot ends, Snoke leaves Rey and Kylo standing there, not looking at one another. Rey can hear the way he’s not moving, how he’s not even shifting his weight on the old, creaky floorboards of this rehearsal room. She takes a deep breath.

And he moves, crossing the room to the door, saying over his shoulder, “Just pretend what you have to pretend. You’re good at that.”

And he’s gone.

And the hot shame is back, as Rey raises a hand to her throat—as if holding it will make the lump that’s spreading around her vocal chords to prepare her for tears go away.

❖

_“Shut up,” she hears Kylo shout as she’s getting out of the elevator. She’s a few minutes early to rehearsal, and she’d hoped to ask Amilyn a few questions privately before everyone else showed up._

_“Or what—you’ll make me, like you made your father?” Hux demands, then she hears him laugh. “That’s your trouble Ren. You think you’re the only one with daddy issues. If you lay a hand on me, you’ll find yourself fired so quickly you won’t even realize what happened. Even Snoke can’t prevent HR from intervening if I go to them. I’m sure your little_ Susanna _will be so pleased to be free of you.”_

_“Leave her alone,” Kylo snarls. Rey can’t breathe. She’s clutching her score to her chest, holding it as tightly as she can. Kylo’s frustrating—it’s true—but she wouldn’t want him gone. But she also doesn’t want him assaulting Hux, as much as Hux makes her miserable._

_“She shouldn’t have been cast and you know it. Just because she was a particularly talented chorus girl in_ Elektra _doesn’t mean that she can bear the weight of a show like this. But then again we all know that Holdo can get sentimental sometimes. That’s probably why you got Figaro instead of Bartolo. Because of dearest daddy? Holdo’s a friend of your mother’s, isn’t she?”_

_Rey doesn’t know what will happen next but she decides now is as good a time as any to round the corner._

_“Do you have a moment?” she asks Kylo._

_“Yes,” he says through gritted teeth and he follows her down the hall and into a practice room._

_“What?” he asks after a moment._

_“I didn’t want you to punch him,” she says quietly. “He may be the most horrible fucker I’ve ever met, but I really would vastly prefer that he not replace you as Figaro after you get fired.”_

_Kylo doesn’t move. He doesn’t say a word._

_“Does that mean I’m not the most horrible fucker you’ve ever met?”_

_“You’re growing on me,” she tells him. Why is she blushing? Why is she noticing how full his lips are?_

❖

 _I_ _want to introduce you to Luke,_ Leia texts her the next day. _If you’d like to meet him._

Rey stares at the words.

“Finn?” she calls out to the kitchen where he’s cooking some pasta.

“Yeah?”

She gets up off the couch and goes to stand in the doorway. “What do I do?” She extends her phone out to him, and Finn reads the text, frowning slightly.

“Tell her you’ve met him already?” he says as though it’s obvious and easy.

“And that I never want to see him again?” _That he disappointed me, that he failed me, that he made me feel worthless, that he made me have to fight for my own sense of worth once again?_

“I mean, maybe not that part,” Finn says. “Maybe it’ll be different if he’s—”

“Not crushing my hopes and dreams?” Rey says with a laugh.

“With his sister.”

Rey wouldn’t know. She doesn’t have a family.

“Kylo said he’s too arrogant to acknowledge that he fucked up,” Rey mumbles.

Finn gives her a look that clearly says, _And you’re really listening to him?_

It’s the look more than anything else than leads her to respond to Leia,

_I’ve already met him._

_Oh wonderful! Let’s get brunch this weekend then._

And she sends Rey a text with a location and time before Rey can even begin to think about how to respond.

Which is how she ends up at a boutique brunch place on Columbus Avenue just before noon, her stomach in knots once again because she’s waiting for Luke and Leia, the server refusing to give her a seat until they’re all there.

“Hope you haven’t been waiting,” Leia says when she arrives but Rey’s eyes drift to her brother.

Kylo looks like his father. His voice sounds like his father, though a little deeper. There are traces of him in his mother’s eyes.

Luke Skywalker looks nothing like his nephew. He’s shorter than Rey, with clear blue eyes and greying hair and beard. And he recognizes her at once.

“I remember you,” he says slowly.

Rey forces a smile onto her face. “It’s good to meet you again, Mr. Skywalker.”

“Please call him Luke,” Leia says before grabbing the hostess’ attention and asking when they’ll be seated.

Luke nods slowly. “Please,” he says. “Call me Luke.” His eyes still haven’t left her, and Rey can’t help but feel that there’s something about her that makes everyone in this family stare at her like she’s the most important person in the galaxy. _Would Han have too?_ She swallows that thought away.

“Rey says you’ve met,” Leia says when they’re at their table. Rey has been staring at her menu, trying to decide how much to order because she suspects that Leia is going to insist on paying for her again and she doesn’t think that Leia knows quite what that means if Rey lets her stomach make that decision for her. 

“Yes,” Luke says. “She came to one of my master classes.”

Rey doesn’t look up from the menu. She’s determined to be polite for Leia, but already her hands are balling into fists under the table.

“Oh wonderful,” Leia says. Her words hang in the air for a moment, and Rey stares at the _Eggs and Omelets_ section without really taking in a word, preparing herself for whatever comes next. “What did you do?” Leia asks, her voice so sharp that Rey’s eyes jerk up. Leia’s looking at Luke, her eyes narrowed and Luke’s face has grown flushed.

“She came on the anniversary of Han’s death,” Luke says slowly and Leia heaves a sigh. _On the anniversary of Han’s…_ She’d snapped at Kylo that day about murdering his father. He’d comforted her through her frustrations about Luke, on the anniversary of the day he and his father…Rey bites back a groan. “And the moment she said she was in Snoke’s production I—I behaved as I should not have. Rey,” he addresses her directly, his blue eyes intent, “Allow me to apologize for my behavior.”

She had allowed—in her imaginations of how this brunch would go—for the possibility that Luke would apologize to her. It was always begrudging, as though he didn’t want to admit error—the way that Kylo had implied was typical of his uncle. Instead, Luke’s gaze is sincere, his voice low and earnest.

“Thank you,” she says at last, her voice a little thicker than she expected.

Luke nods. “You’re starring opposite,” he pauses, as though unused to the name, “Kylo, then?”

“Yes,” Rey says. “He’s playing Figaro.”

Luke nods and glances at Leia. “Be mindful of him,” Luke says at last. “His lack of control can leave bodies in his wake. I’m sure you will have seen that in rehearsal.”

He says it almost casually—so much so that Rey feels herself stiffen. She’d found Kylo arrogant in those early days, absolutely. And she’d found him frustrating, entitled, rude at times. But the way his uncle says this sits wrong somehow. Rey frowns.

“He’s been kinder to me than you have been,” Rey hears herself say and Luke freezes and Leia’s eyes go wide. “Or am I supposed to take your behavior towards me as anything other than erratic?”

To her surprise, Leia laughs. Luke looks chagrinned, and glances at her sister. “I see what you mean,” he says quietly.

Rey looks at both of them sharply, confused, wondering what the twins had discussed of her. Leia, still chuckling, shakes her head and takes a sip of her coffee. “Chew him out. He deserves it, I’m sure. If he can’t take some frank critique after all these years, I don’t know why I’ve been bothering.” Then her face grows a little more serious, the laughter fading from her deep brown eyes. _Kylo’s eyes._ “He’s been kind to you?”

She can hear the curiosity there, because surely Leia had noticed the way that Kylo had avoided looking at her the other day, and surely she’s noticed the way that Rey doesn’t ever mention him unless prompted.

“He was,” Rey says quietly, looking down at her hands. “I messed it up.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Leia says comfortingly. “My son can be…” she pauses, trying to find the right word, and Rey interrupts her.

“No, I did. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And I have to live with it now.”

Luke is watching her. “Join the club,” he says at last. “He’s a sensitive boy. Always has been. Never known what to do with all the things he feels and when he doesn’t direct it inward towards himself, he directs it outward towards those who love him.” _And leaves bodies in his wake._ He sounds so very sad in that moment. Tired, and old, and sad.

“When I saw him with Snoke the other day,” Leia says to her brother, “It was just—I just—it was a sign. I know it was. That my son’s gone. He’s just gone.”

“No one’s ever really gone,” Luke says and for a moment, Rey wonders if Kylo ever saw this side of his uncle—patient and warm, the way he looks at his sister. She wonders, remembering viscerally the way that Luke had chewed her out during that master class, whether he’d ever extended that side of him to his nephew. “Maybe there’s some hope left for him,” Luke’s gaze turns back to Rey. “Or have you given up on him?”

_Just pretend what you have to pretend. You’re good at that._

She doesn’t know what she thinks anymore.

❖

 _For_ _the first three months she is at Unkar’s, she tells herself that if she does her chores well, her parents will come back. They will. They will see she’s a good girl and they were wrong. If she is just obedient, she will make it better._

_This is because she had been a bad girl. It is a punishment, she understands that—a different sort of punishment from daddy shaking her and telling her to shut up. They are doing this because she’d never listened to that, had always been stubborn._

_If she makes her bed and keeps her room clean, they will come back for her._

_She finds a tape in a car that Unkar is stripping for parts._ The Magic Flute. _She can’t understand what the singers are saying, but she likes their voices. They sound happy._

_If she sounds like them, maybe she can be happy too._

❖

Luke grabs a cab when they finish eating—a prior commitment, he tells them both without explaining what it is.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Leia asks Rey, and the two of them make their way towards Central Park. “I love the Park,” Leia tells Rey as they make their way into it. “I forget that the world can be green sometimes, which is probably a sign that I should leave Manhattan more than I do.”

“Did you grow up here?” Rey asks.

“No,” Leia says. “I grew up in Connecticut. Not far, but much greener. Quieter.”

Rey can’t imagine. Conservatory had been wonderfully green, but she understands entirely when Leia says that she forgets the world can be green. Even in winter, the Park feels far more alive than the desert, despite the fact that there’d been cacti growing in her foster father’s back yard—horrible prickly things that scratched and stung if you got too close.

“I like the green, too,” Rey tells Leia. “I feel like it’s easier to breathe here.”

“Marginally less polluted,” Leia winks at her.

They stroll about, talking about nothing at all. It’s wonderful, Rey thinks, to talk about nothing at all. To talk about the worst part of dress rehearsals, and how different it is when they are rehearsing with an orchestra; about how the MTA really needs to get its act together and fix the subways; about restaurants that they haven’t been to yet but want to try. Rey tells her about Finn, who Leia has heard of. “Finn—Finn Jackson? Poe’s friend?” Leia asks and Rey nods. “He sounds like a nice young man.”

“He is,” Rey says. “I don’t know where I’d be without Finn.” Probably still with Unkar Plutt. She’d have found a reason to drop out of school without Finn there to be her backbone. She is sure she’d have been triply miserable about everything that’s been going on if Finn weren’t there with her too.

“I know the feeling,” Leia sighs. “That’s Luke for me. Even before I knew he was actually my brother, sometimes I think my life would have ended before anything really got started if it weren’t for him. He’s always been there for me. Even when it’s hard.”

“Han?” Rey asks. _Kylo?_

Leia gives her a weak smile. “You know, he’s been dead for years now, and I still miss him. It’s not the same not having him around. And yes, I can move on to an extent. He wasn’t my be-all and end-all, and probably would have made fun of me if I’d ever thought that. But there’s a hole in my life now, and sometimes I worry it’ll never close back up. But then again, that might be because of Ben.” She sighs. “I’m sorry I keep bringing him up. I know it’s not your responsibility to comfort an old woman her failings as a mother.”

“You didn’t fail him,” Rey says. “You couldn’t have.”

“That’s sweet of you to say, but far from the truth. I never gave him the time he needed. If I had, then maybe Snoke wouldn’t have got him.” Rey can hear in her voice that Leia is thinking of the way that Snoke had leaned on Ben the exact same way that Rey is thinking about it. “Maybe Han would still be alive and I would have them both and there wouldn’t be this hole in my heart and this horrible guilt that I’m responsible for it all.”

Rey doesn’t remember her mother. She doesn’t really remember her parents so much as she remembers remembering. It’s probably, painfully, for the better that way. She’d had Han Solo growing up, and Leia Organa, and Luke Skywalker—voices so loud and rich and emotional that she couldn’t help but feel that maybe, just maybe, there could be good in this world—if she just chose to see it.

She can’t bear that Leia blames herself for all this, can’t bear Leia’s grief. She feels responsible for it, in some way, even though she’s not, even though the idea that she might be is a stupid one. She doesn’t remember ever hugging her mother, or her mother hugging her, but Rey wraps her arms around Leia in what she intends to be a quick hug, a friendly hug, the sort of hug she gives Bebe or Finn—physical touch as a sign of love that she’d never known as a girl.

Leia doesn’t let her go. Leia holds her close and Rey’s eyes prickle with tears. Is this what it’s like to be held by a mother? To feel like _family_ somehow, precious, safe? She barely knows Leia, but Leia has already shown her more care than anyone who is supposed to have been her family.

When at last they break apart, Leia smiles up at her. Her eyes are bright, wet with tears, and her cheeks are flushed from the cold. “You’re a good person, Rey Johnson,” Leia tells her. “And I’m lucky to have you in my life.”

Rey feels her throat clog, feels her heart swell.

Together, they turn back down the path and walk straight into Kylo Ren.

He is staring at both of them, his face dripping with fury, and all the warmth and safety that Rey had felt only moments before shrivels away.

“Ben,” his mother chokes out in surprise, but Kylo’s eyes are on Rey, not on Leia, boiling anger that Leia can’t possibly—will _never_ so long as Rey lives—understand.

“Was I just a stepping stone, then?” he demands. “All that talk about how bloodlines and legacy don’t mean anything to you and now this? Just trying to get close to my mother and uncle, is that it? Since you couldn’t have my father?”

❖

 _She_ _doesn’t have time to take in Kylo’s apartment at all. She can’t, not when she’s this hungry for him. There will be time later. So much time later, she hopes. She can’t believe this is real, that this is finally happening, that he seems to want her as much as she wants him._

_He unzips her jacket and shoves it off her shoulder and a moment later, his hands are splayed across her back, fumbling for the hem of her shirt which is tucked into her jeans. He tugs it loose and a moment later his skin is hot against hers, his hands climbing her spine as he pulls her deeper into the dark apartment, not bothering to turn on lights._

_Their eyes will adjust to the dark. They don’t need the light. They just need each other._

_God she needs him as he pulls her down onto a bed and she straddles his hips, feeling his erection pressing hard through his pants. He pulls her shirt up over her head and while he’s throwing it onto the ground behind her, Rey takes the opportunity to murmur, “Don’t touch my stomach,” into his lips._

_If the request is one he finds odd, he doesn’t show it, instead burying his face between her breasts and sucking at the skin along the edge of her bra while his hands cup at her ass and Rey groans, letting her head fall forward, her face pressing conveniently into his beautiful dark hair. She loves his hair. It’s soft, and silky, and she rubs her nose through it. She likes the smell of his shampoo—a little bit pine-y—and he positively growls as she runs her hands through it too._

_“You like that?” she asks breathily. It’s a stupid question, she can tell it is from the way that his hips are rocking into hers and sweet_ Jesus _does that feel divine. She can tell through the denim and cotton of her underpants that she’s probably soaking and ready for him already._

_“Pull it,” he groans into her tits and his whole body trembles when she does._

_With his teeth, he drags the cup of her bra down below her nipple and starts to suck on it, and Rey just keeps running her hands through his hair, gasping for air and closing her eyes when his hands slip under the waistline of her jeans to squeeze her ass beneath her underwear. Why are they still wearing clothes? What’s the point of that? She wants him naked and he hasn’t even taken his shirt off._

_Which, she supposes, given that he’d pulled her shirt off for her, she can only really blame herself for. So she releases his hair and tugs his shirt up over his head and before the cotton has even left her hand, Kylo has twisted them, pushed her down onto the bed, his chest pressed against hers._

_His torso is so_ long _, and as he struggles to straighten her hips out underneath him, his groin is too far down for her to rub against and she whines at him. He grins and a moment later his chest is pulling away from hers, he’s propping himself up on his elbows, his lips finding hers and his groin sliding up between her legs once again._

_He feels divine. He sounds divine. She loves his voice, she loves how rich and deep it is, she loves the way that—even before she’d known him, even before she’d liked him—it had reminded her of home. This is all exquisite, perfect, and even if she’d rather that he was inside her already, the friction of their jeans between them makes her feel as though her every vein is alight with him._

_They roll their way across his bed, onto their sides so they can fumble at the buttons and zippers still in their way, hands delving down into fabric that’s damp with sweat and need. She pulls him loose first and his cock has the softest skin she’s ever felt, like velvet, like satin as she rubs her hands along it and his lovely bass voice goes a little higher as he moans into the skin of her neck._

_They shimmy his jeans most of the way down his legs before he stops caring about them and he tugs Rey’s down her hips too, taking her underwear with them. It’s dumb—how his jeans can stay around his knees without getting in the way but hers need to come all the way off her legs, but they make it work and a moment later he’s pressing two fingers into her and she’s whimpering. His fingers are blunt, and wide, but she’s got his cock in her hand, pulling at it while he grunts and she knows that it’s going to be even wider when his fingers—at last—pull away and he lines himself up to her and presses into her._

_In music, silences are as powerful as even the most powerful chords, the most intricate melodies. The rest, a time for breath, for anticipation. And the silence that fills the room as he slides his way into her—they’re neither of them breathing. Rey’s heart is hammering in her chest but she can’t even hear her pulse in her ears. There’s nothing but the way Kylo feels inside her, the way he looks into her eyes when he’s locked in place and starts to retreat again._

_And then the music begins again, the slap of his thighs against hers, the wet noises her cunt makes as he presses into her, their breath, their groans, her heart now louder than it’s been in years, dancing to a different time signature than their hips but the mismatched rhythms aren’t cacophonous at all. This is why Rey likes music. Music is life. Music reminds her that she’s alive._

_Kylo’s voice is all the music she’s ever loved, higher than usual as he whimpers into her throat. It’s sweeter than any aria, more heartfelt, richer, smoother, brighter, and their voices have always sounded so good together when they sing—they sound right together now, even if his is a little higher and hers is_ _a little lower_ _._

_“I’m close,” he tells her breathlessly the word turning into a hiss, into a long, baritone hum._

_Maybe it’s the baritone of the hum. Or maybe it’s that she feels safe in his voice, that it sounds like home, that it sounds like everything that had kept her from giving up. Or maybe it’s that she’s close too—so very close and she can’t control her mouth at all and so when, “Han,” comes out of her lips it’s not that she’d meant to say it at all, not that she’d even thought that that was who was between her legs._

_Kylo comes immediately, silently._

_Silence is so loud sometimes._

_The rest._

_The break before the music comes back in._

_For a moment, she doesn’t think he’d heard her, isn’t even convinced that she’d said it._

_And then she sees his face._

_“What the fuck?”_

❖

Rey stands there speechless. She doesn’t know what to say, can’t begin to know what to say. Luckily, Kylo doesn’t seem to expect her to say anything at all. He rounds on his mother next. “Trying to replace me? Is that why you’re hanging around with Poe Dameron also?”

“Poe’s not a replacement for you.” Leia’s voice is pleading and yet, also, somehow amused. She grows more serious as she continues. “No one could replace you.”

“But you don’t deny Rey, then?” Kylo demands at the same time that Leia says,

“Poe’s a replacement for your father.”

Kylo’s entire body freezes, but his face is contorting with rage and derision and hurt—a whole mix of emotions that he doesn’t bother trying to hide from his mother or from Rey.

“Ben,” Leia says, reaching for her son but he takes a step back from her. “Ben, please. It’s been seven years. I’m allowed to move on, and you _certainly_ don’t have a right to tell me with whom or—”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Kylo grits out. “You can _fuck_ whoever you like. I don’t care.”

He turns on his heel and makes to flee but this time, Leia is successful in grabbing his arm. “ _Ben_ ,” she begs. “Listen to me, please.”

“Listen to _what_?”

“I don’t know what about,” Leia says. “I understand that you’re hurt, but we can’t work through it if you don’t—”

“I don’t want to stay,” he says. “Especially not if you’ve found a replacement goldfish.”

“Rey’s not here to replace you,” Leia repeats, “No one could replace you. You’re my _son_ , Ben. My child.”

“Then what are you doing with her?” It sounds like a child’s whine, jealous, not wanting to share his mother with anyone, not wanting anyone to have his mother’s attention but him.

“I’m trying to mentor her,” Leia says. “I’m trying to build a relationship with a younger singer who reminds me of _me_.”

Kylo’s eyes snap back to Rey’s and there it is again—the same look of shocked horror on his face as right after he’d come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actual footage of me, always:  
> 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just say that I'm sorry I haven't had time to get to reviews yet. I hope to soon!
> 
> Onward!

“Everything ok?” Finn asks when he gets home and finds Rey sitting on the floor, surrounded by six empty beer bottles and staring at her computer, which is playing _The Barber of Seville_ starring Han Solo.

_Yes, Finn. I called Kylo Ren by his dad’s name while we were having sex, and then his mother told him I remind her of her. Everything’s dandy._

Rey grunts.

“You’re back late,” she says. It’s true. Finn usually comes back after her—he goes to the gym on most evenings. But it’s Saturday. And on Saturday nights, if he’s out, he’s invited her along because he’s doing things with Poe.

“Yeah,” he says. “I am. I was…I was hanging out with Rose.”

“You kiss?” Rey asks, desperately deciding to channel Bebe. _Please. Please let me think of anything but this._ Because even thinking about Poe made her think about how Leia had said that Poe reminded her of Han and the way that Kylo’s face had contorted at the idea of his mother having sex with someone who reminded her of his dad. _As if you didn’t have sex with someone who reminds you of your mom,_ she thinks bitterly.

“Rey?”

“Rose? Did you kiss Rose?”

Finn reaches an arm across his chest to scratch his collarbone. “No,” he says. “We were just hanging out as friends, I think. Get that look off your face,” he adds. “I mean it. Her sister was there. It was nice.”

“Oh.” Rey raises a bottle to her lips before remembering that she’d emptied it into her stomach already. Kylo hadn’t touched her stomach while she’d been having sex with him. He’d only ever filled her stomach with food. And come inside her after she’d called him by his dad’s name.

“Ok, what’s going on?” Finn asks, crossing to sit next to Rey on the floor.

“Listen,” Rey says, pointing to her laptop. Han’s voice sounds so much like Kylo’s. It makes her want to cry. It makes her want to kiss him. _Had_ she just fucked Kylo because of Han’s voice? That’s what he thought, especially after he saw her in the park with his mother. He’d said as much. _Was I just a stepping stone, then?_ “I love this part.”

“It’s good,” Finn says. “Rey, what’s going on?”

“Just more of the same,” she says, leaning against him. “I’m glad Rose wants to kiss you.”

“She doesn’t want to kiss me. Her sister was there.”

“If you say so.” Rey closes her eyes and lets the solid, sturdy warmth of Finn fill her. Family. Finn’s the family she chose.

When she’d hugged Leia in the park, it had felt maybe, almost, like what she imagined hugging a mother would be like. _If I marry Kylo, then Leia would be my mother._

_But I’m not going to marry Kylo. It’s the Marriage of Figaro, not the Marriage of Kylo._

_Just pretend what you have to pretend. You’re good at that._

She wonders if Kylo had fucked her aware that she reminded him of his mother, or if that had hit him like a truck in the park. She hopes it’s the latter. It’ll make her feel better about accidentally calling him Han.

“I’ll be fine tomorrow,” Rey says to Finn because she knows he’s still waiting. “Let me just have my nutty breakdown, ok? I’ll pull myself back together.”

She’s good at that. She’s always had to be.

“Do I have to murder Kylo Ren?”

“No,” Rey says again, firmly. She loves him for asking though. No one has ever felt that protective of her.

Except Kylo Ren.

“I’d like another beer,” she says.

“You’ve had enough, I think.”

“Hmm,” Rey thinks. She sometimes wonders how much more she can take. At some point, surely, she’ll actually break, won’t she? “Probably.”

“Let’s get you to bed,” Finn says.

“Let me at least finish the act.”

“You can listen while you fall asleep.”

Just like when she’d been a little girl, when Han Solo had been more of a solace to her than anything Unkar Plutt could even begin to be. Just for one more night, she’ll be safe listening to him sing.

She’ll tackle his son tomorrow. The son who murdered him. Christ this was all too much.

❖

 _He_ _has such a lovely shy smile. She gets the sense he doesn’t use it much because she can practically hear the joints in his face creak when, slowly it spreads across his face._

_She reaches a hand up to cup his cheek, and guides his lips to hers. His lips are just as soft as she’d imagined, and the moment they connect with hers, they begin to devour her. She doesn’t mind. She’s devouring him right back, her heart hammering in her chest as she twines her arms around his neck and stands on her toes._

_She’s never had issues kissing a man before. She’s tall enough that it’s hard to find men outside of the easy range of kissing. But there she is, pulling herself up, letting his hands steady her hips, support her as his tongue delves into her mouth, his breath tasting of the wine that they’d drunk._

❖

“You actually got _worse_ at it,” Snoke berates them. “I thought I told you to practice.”

Neither of them says a word.

“I thought you might at least want to put an effort in for your debut performance, Miss Johnson,” Snoke says, but his disappointment doesn’t hit her nearly as hard as she would have thought. “And you—Kylo—I know you can do better. I know you can seem more…intimate.” Snoke gets to his feet. “We start dress tomorrow. I want chemistry or I swear I will find new leads.”

❖

 _She_ _doesn’t remember when Unkar started hitting her._

_She does remember her grades getting worse though._

❖

“I’ve told Snoke she was a mistake.”

“What did he say?”

“He says that he can’t do anything about it now. He can’t risk the performance and apparently the understudy is worse.”

“Between her and Jackson, I’ll be surprised if the production isn’t a complete flop.”

Their words echo up the stairwell, where Rey had gone for quiet and to let herself just stop feeling things for a few minutes. She hadn’t gone to hear Hux and Phasma complain about her and Finn. She hadn’t gone there to feel worse about everything.

“At least he can act. Or maybe he doesn’t have to try very hard because he already hates Ren and—”

“Oh, because you’re such a good actor.”

Rey hadn’t expected the third voice at all, but there’s Rose’s echoing up from somewhere below.

“Ahh, Tico,” Hux begins, but Rose cuts him off,

“I suppose it’s natural for you to be a controlling dick so Bartolo’s not exactly a hard role for you. Doesn’t matter that opera singers don’t act because you don’t even have to. What?” she pauses. “Can’t take your own medicine? Or do you just not like these sentiments when they’re being directed at you rather than at others, you hypocritical—”

“Jackson’s never been a good actor,” Phasma interrupts. “I’ve known him for years. He’s weak.”

“He’s a damn sight better at it than you,” Rose growls. “And a better person.”

“Darling, I don’t care about being a good person,” Phasma yawns.

“Congratulations,” Rose retorts without missing a beat. “On being a weak human being with no morality at all. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“I sleep just fine, and am quite pleased with my career. Come on, Armitage.”

Rey hears a door open and close, and hears footsteps that have to be Rose’s. But Rose doesn’t appear before her—she must be taking the stairs even further down.

 _I should have done that,_ Rey thinks miserably. _Finn’s my best friend. And even if I can’t defend myself, I can at least defend him._ Her hands pick at the front of her shirt. A thread is coming loose and she tugs at it, but it snags rather than coming loose.

❖

_“Come on, baby, you know you want to,” Teedo slurs and Rey watches as he grabs Bebe by the middle, pulling her closer. Bebe is small. She’s full of energy, and it’s easy to forget how small she is—that’ something that Rey has noticed in the master classes they’ve shared. But Rey sees the way that she shrinks away from Teedo’s touch and a moment later, Rey is bellowing with as much volume as her opera training allows,_

_“Let her go!”_

_The entire party seems to go still, college students looking up from their solo cups and staring curiously at Teedo and Bebe. Teedo has frozen and Bebe, quick on the uptake, darts away as Rey takes a step forward._

_Rey has gotten into fights before. She tries not to, she hates fighting. But she does when she needs to defend herself._

_This is the first time she was preparing herself to defend someone else._

_Bebe’s from Boston. She comes from a good family. She’d never gone to sleep trying to block out the sounds of someone getting beaten in the garage. She’s smaller than Teedo._

_But Rey isn’t. Rey looms over him, her hands balled into fists._

_“She said no,” she growls at him. The party had been loud moments before, but now it’s very quiet and everyone’s staring at Teedo and Rey._

_“Fuck off,” Teedo says, his face red though whether from drink or from embarrassment, Rey can’t tell._

_“No._ You _fuck off,” she responds._

_His beady eyes dart around the room, calculating, and when he sees that no one’s on his side, he turns away and wades through the people towards the beer._

_“You ok?” Rey asks Bebe. Bebe’s face is crumpled. “Want to get out of here?”_

_Bebe nods, and they do._

❖

They are with the costume department for their final fittings before going into dress rehearsals. It’s Rey’s turn—Finn, Bebe, and Rose are sitting there, waiting for her, their fittings already done. Rey is taking deep breaths as the costumes assistant wraps a measuring tape around her bust, around her hips, around her waist. _Part of the job,_ she reminds herself. It’s different, when it’s not hands, and sometimes it’s fine. Right now, it feels like Kaydel could tighten that measuring tape, and tighten it, and tighten it until Rey was snapped in half around her middle.

“You’ve lost weight,” Kaydel sighs. “We’ll have to tighten all your costumes. Have you been eating all right?”

“I—” Rey begins before biting her lip. No, she hasn’t been. She hasn’t been eating her usual sixteen meals a day. She’s barely felt hungry since that night in Kylo’s bed.

“Nervous?” Kaydel asks, not unkindly. “You’re going to do great. And eating helps with nerves.” She bends down to begin measuring the length of the skirt and Rey breathes a little more easily.

“Look, there are a lot of ways that Almaviva is a complete ass in this play, but good god you’re a foot taller than his wife,” Finn says with a grin.

“One of a thousand more reasons why Rosina should run off with Cherubino,” Bebe says from the couch where she’s waiting for her turn. “He’d treat her well.”

Rey ducks behind the changing screen to take off her costume. Her heart is still racing a little too much.

“Or maybe between this and Bartolo in _The Barber of Seville_ , Rosina should give up on men entirely,” Rose suggests. “What do you say, Rey? Shall we give them all a shocker on opening night? Susanna can do better than Figaro too.”

When she comes out from behind the screen, she sees Finn’s expression first, his eyes trained on the door. Kylo is standing there, his arms crossed over his chest, glowering. “I’ll come back later,” he tells Kaydel, pointedly ignoring all of them in such a way that it’s clear that he had absolutely heard Rose’s joke.

“We’re done,” Rey says breathily, grabbing her sweatshirt from the sofa next to Bebe and tugging it over her head. Maybe she’ll feel more settled when her stomach is hidden beneath the baggy fabric. She’ll certainly feel better when Kylo’s not there.

Rose and Finn and Bebe all brush past Kylo on their way out, but as Rey passes him, his hand shoots out and he grabs her arm. “We should talk.”

Rey flares. “Oh, _now_ we should talk?” He’d been so determined not to listen when he’d thrown her out of his apartment, half-dressed and crying.

“If it’s affecting our performance—”

“Dinner,” she cuts him off angrily, suddenly tired, too tired to argue with him, especially when she knows that she will at some point cave. “I apparently have weight to gain.”

He frowns and glances at Kaydel, who is pulling out an extremely frilly blouse for him.

He nods and Rey departs, not bothering to go back to the break room where she’s sure Finn and Bebe and Rose are waiting for her. She doesn’t put on her coat when she goes outside, letting the cold winter air hit her like a wave. Or at least, she thinks so. She’s never been to the beach, has never been knocked over by water. But she certainly feels the cold wash over her, feels her body cool. She hadn’t realized how hot she’d been while Kaydel had pinched at the waistline of her skirt. She hadn’t realized how anxious it had made her until she’s standing outside in the cold, her teeth chattering slightly as she wraps her arms around herself, hugging herself closely.

She’s going to have dinner with Kylo Ren.

She’d fallen asleep that weekend listening to his father, feeling safe, and almost bolstered coming into today. She can draw strength from that. She’s too tired to care about it. She’s too tired to think about what it might mean.

❖

_“You’re determined to hate me.” His eyes bore into her. He has such intense eyes. It makes him a fascinating singer to act opposite._

_“Does that offend you?” she asks, hands on her hips._

_“When I think I’m being unfairly judged, yes.”_

You murdered your father, _she wants to say._ Your father, your mother, and your uncle got me through hell and you murdered him.

_But he’d never been formally accused. It’s just rumors._

_“Perhaps I’d like you more if you didn’t run so close to Snoke,” she says instead._

_His eyes narrow. “Snoke cast you.”_

_“According to Hux, it was Holdo who saw me cast and Snoke didn’t care one way or another about my performance.”_

_“He’s still directing your debut. Without him, you’d be nothing.”_

_“I don’t need anyone to make me worthwhile,” she snaps. She wishes she believed it. But she doesn’t need him to see every ounce of her own insecurity. She refuses to show him any weakness._

_But something in those eyes flicker, as though he caught her defensiveness and knew exactly what it was hiding—knew all too well._

_“No,” he says at last. “You don’t. You’re worth more than Snoke gives you credit for.”_

_Why does she hear_ than you give yourself credit for _under those words?_

_Odd praise, from a man who is upset that she is determined to hate him._

_Why does she feel the impulse to say_ so are you _? Why does she care. She’s determined not to care about Kylo Ren._

❖

Rey finds him seated on edge of the fountain, just the way he had been the first time they’d gotten a meal together. His hands are jammed into the pockets of his black coat as he watches her make her way towards him.

“Indian?” he asks her.

“Sure,” she replies, and they walk a few blocks to an Indian place she’s never tried, where they order a tremendous amount of food without saying a word to one another.

It’s as terrible as Rey had anticipated. Worse, really. Worse because she’s afraid for it to start.

Rey hates being afraid, so she looks him dead in the eye—even as he’s trying to avoid her gaze—and asks,

“Do you really think that? That I was just using you as a stepping stone?”

“What else was I supposed to think?” he shoots back through gritted teeth. “I saw you after my uncle’s master class, and you were always pressing me about my father, even before _it_ happened. And now you’re apparently my mother’s protégé.”

“Do you really think so little of yourself?” she asks. She doesn’t understand why, but the implication that he somehow thinks he doesn’t matter in all this is honestly insulting. Rey isn’t quick to trust, but she’d trusted him, had faith in him, had felt safe with him.

He laughs humorlessly. “I told you before. Having them to overshadow you in everything you do is a weight too heavy to bear sometimes. My grandfather changed his stage name to try and make a name for himself. I changed mine to get away from it all.”

“And yet Snoke thinks that it’s your _bloodline_ that makes you worthwhile,” Rey retorts. “Don’t even pretend I didn’t hear him say that to you. Your logic is flawed.”

“Snoke can think what he likes—he’s still the only person who’s ever seen me as me. I owe him more than I can say.” The way he says it sends a chill up Rey’s spine. _He saw. He saw what happened with Han._

He saw what happened with Han, and had a habit of touching Kylo, and had told Rey to slap him while also telling him that she didn’t love him nearly enough.

“He’s fucked up,” Rey tells Kylo flatly.

“As if everyone isn’t,” Kylo responds without missing a beat.

“The way he treats you is fucked up. The way he treats everyone is fucked up but the way he treats you—”

“He’s been more like a father to me than my own father. I told you that already,” Kylo snaps. “You want to fuck him too, now?”

“He repulses me,” Rey responds, and it’s only after the words are out of her mouth that she remembers that Snoke is her director, that he could crush her career if he felt so inspired, and that Kylo cares about him more than he cares about his own family it seems. If he wanted to destroy Rey, he could.

They sit there, glaring at one another, looking away from one another only when the waiter arrives with a large basket of garlic naan, which Rey tears into because like hell is she not eating her feelings right now. She chews furiously, hoping her gaze burns right through him, hoping that he can feel how much she hates him for saying that.

“And how he doesn’t repulse you is beyond me,” Rey says at last.

“Someone caring about you goes a long way towards forgiving their flaws,” he says.

“Says the man who hasn’t called his mother in years. You think she doesn’t care about you?”

His jaw gets tight. “You think just because you’ve talked to her twice that you know everything there is to know about her?”

“I don’t know,” Rey snaps, rolling her eyes, “I’ve talked to her a little more recently than you have.”

“And you believe her? You’re more naive than I thought. She’s a born liar, my mother. The perfect politician. She can say _anything_ to get people to believe her.”

“You’re so determined to think ill of her—”

“You think I don’t have my reasons?”

“How do you know that she hasn’t changed—whatever it was that makes you think so little of her, how do you know that she hasn’t grappled with it after you threw her away?”

“And why would you believe she has? Because she’s another one of your star favorites? Your _idol_ growing up?”

“Families don’t just give up on one another like that!”

“Yeah? How would you know?”

_Come back!_

_Quiet, girl._

Rey glares at him and gets to her feet. “You’re right,” she says icily. “I wouldn’t, would I?”

“Rey,” he calls after her, but she rounds on him before he can continue.

“I’m not your punching bag,” she snaps. “I can fuck up. I’m not perfect. But that was low and I don’t have any more tears to cry over you.”

She wheels around and marches out the door, knowing full well she’s leaving him with the check and with the stares of everyone in the restaurant, and more than a little bit frustrated that she doesn’t get to take home any leftovers.


	7. Chapter 7

The next day, she takes a deep breath before stepping onto the stage.

The lights in the house are low, and in the pit, she can already see Amilyn shuffling through her score and talking to the first seat violinist. Snoke is somewhere out in the house and Kylo—

Kylo is on his knees, a measuring tape in hand, not looking around for her at all.

“From the top of _Cinque_ ,” Amilyn informs the orchestra when she sees Rey, lifting her hands lightly, her wrist arched and her baton pointing like a sword from her hand. She gives an upbeat and the violins begin and it’s not like their other rehearsals. It’s not a piano, or Snoke’s eyes. It’s a full orchestra and everything that this music has ever been able to make her feel, light in her own heart, in her own mind, beautiful, peaceful. And when Kylo begins to sing, he sounds perfect. He has always sounded good—that has always been the problem. But when it’s violins and cellos and flutes and clarinets accompanying him, he becomes Figaro in a way that he’d never been before.

_Just pretend what you have to pretend. You’re good at that._

But she finds she doesn’t have to pretend at all. Not when there’s music like this—not when they’re making music together like this. She can forget all the rest. Or maybe she’s just pretending.

He looks surprised at the warmth in her eyes as she joins him in duet, undoubtedly because she had abandoned him with his Indian food the night before in a fit of rage. And for just a moment, she sees his eyes flicker in response to hers, warmth starting to creep in before they harden again. Again, he has to remind himself not to warm to her. Again he has to slam the door on her.

_He thinks I’m pretending he’s his father._

Bitterly, she lets him. It’s easier than trying to understand the way her heart aches that he doesn’t understand that it’s his voice that she can feel down in the depths of her ribs, somewhere between her diaphragm and her heart.

❖

_Unkar locks the door before Rey can get out of the car and turns around in the seat._

_“I don’t want trouble from you,” he tells her and she looks down at her hands. “That social worker—she’s going to believe you’re_ happy _you got that?”_

_“What about my parents?” she asks quietly._

_“Forget them,” Unkar tells her. “They didn’t want you. How long is it going to take to get that through that pretty little skull of yours?”_

_She flinches and her head throbs. The sun’s bright outside and she hasn’t had a lot to drink today. She’s sure that Unkar is lying to her. If she’s good, then they’ll come back for her. They were gone because she hadn’t been good. That is all._

_“So you be sure to tell that social worker you’re happy. That I’m as good as your father—better than. Got that? Or else there’ll be hell to pay.”_

_Her head really is hurting, but she pulls a smile onto her face when she looks up at him, sweating in the front seat of the car. “Got it,” she says. “I’ll be good. You’re the best foster father I could hope for.” She says the words clearly—as clearly as she can, somehow sensing that if she says them clearly, precisely, then she’ll be believed._

_She keeps smiling long after she and Unkar get out of the car._

_She’ll smile the whole damn day if it means that they think she’s a good girl and tell her parents and they want her back._

❖

“That went well,” Bebe says when they’re on the A headed back uptown.

“It went two hours longer than scheduled,” Finn replies, not bothering to hide his derision. He’s tired and hungry and had not taken kindly to some of Snoke’s directions—bidding that he be more possessive of both Susanna and Rosina, that he be more horrible, that he be more lecherous.

“Which isn’t bad for a first run,” Bebe tries. Rey tilts her head back against the window. They’d gotten seats, which is a blessing, given how draining the rehearsal had been. Rey always forgets how tiring the first dress rehearsals can be, before your stamina is up as high as it needs to be, before adrenaline carries you through. She feels drained of everything.

Snoke hadn’t made a single comment about how she’d needed to seem more in love with Kylo which she supposes means that dinner had worked—if Kylo’s intent had truly been to try and fix their performance issues. It’s not like Snoke had ever complained of Kylo’s performance about her—but then again, he looks at Kylo as though everything he does is perfect, as though he can do no wrong, as though—

She feels uncomfortable at the thought.

Kylo had said that Snoke was like a father to him.

Rey had never known a truly loving father. She’d had Unkar Plutt, who had hit and starved her, and whoever Mr. Johnson had been who had abandoned his daughter to nothingness. But she’s certain—as certain as she is that _true_ family doesn’t give up on one another—that no father ever looks at his son like _that_ , as though he wants to possess him, somehow.

_I’m glad I look enough like I love his precious Kylo._

It’s strange.

She’s angry with him, hurt by him, confused by him—but she still doesn’t like the way Snoke looks at him, doesn’t think he deserves whatever it is she fears in him. _He killed his father,_ she berates herself, the voice in her head sounding very much like Poe. _He killed his father and he keeps making you cry._

But why does she get the feeling that he doesn’t like that? Even if he hates her for what had happened in his bed, she doesn’t get the impression that he likes it when she hurts—just as she doesn’t like it when he hurts.

He still has to stop himself from being warm around her.

“Rey?”

“Hm?” Finn and Bebe are looking at her.

“I said, did you and Kylo talk? He seemed different today.”

“I yelled at him last night,” she says. “He was being an ass.”

“About whatever—” Finn begins

“No, about something else. He—” She cuts herself off though, aware that her friends are waiting for her to explain. “He is just a confusing person.”

Finn snorts. “That’s a word for it.”

“I wish he weren’t confusing you,” Bebe says softly. “I wish it were simple for you. Life’s hard enough.”

“He’s not harder than anything else I’ve had to deal with,” Rey says darkly, shoving memories of her foster father aside. “But he hits deeper than anything has in a while.”

They get off the train and Bebe heads towards her apartment while Rey and Finn head towards theirs.

Rey’s phone buzzes in her hand and a text from Leia floats across her lock screen.

_How was dress?_

_It went well._

_I’m glad to hear it._

She doesn’t press. It’s the first time she’s reached out to Rey since Kylo had confronted them in the park. A lump rises in her throat and she tucks her phone away, glancing at Finn. He’s staring at his phone, reading a text as well, a small smile on his face.

“What’s got you smiling like that?” Rey asks.

“Nothing.” He’s lying. She can tell. He’s shoving his phone into his pocket too quickly and sounds a little breathless. But her protest that he should tell her dies on her lips. He’s been giving her the space she’s needed about Kylo—even if she knows he doesn’t want to. She can’t push him if he doesn’t want to tell her. That’s not fair.

So she sighs and lets him fake it as he checks their mailbox—only junk mail—and then they climb several floors to their apartment.

“Finn?”

“Yeah?” he pauses on his way into his bedroom and Rey bites her lip.

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it with you,” she says. “I do. I really do. It’s that—”

“I get it. It’s personal,” he says, shrugging. “You’re allowed stuff that’s private to you.”

“I—” Rey swallows. “I feel like if I tell you—if I tell anyone—that’ll set it in stone, you know? And maybe I’m just being in as much denial as I ever am, pretending it’ll get better because I need to believe it. But I feel like if I tell you, there’s not a shot that it will.”

“And you want it to?” Finn’s face is very serious, his dark eyes drinking her in, watching every line of her face, looking for cracks.

Rey doesn’t answer.

Finn understands.

❖

_“Fuck him,” Rey rages, throwing herself onto the futon. “Fuck him. Fuck him. Or rather—I refuse to fuck him. I’m done. I’m so done.”_

_Finn is in the kitchen making Ramen. “Do you need ice cream?” he calls to her._

_“This is not an ice cream situation,” Rey responds._

_“I thought you said every time was an ice cream situation.”_

_He has her there. Ice cream had always been a treat for her, something she’d managed to buy with what little money she could scrape together. Ice cream is a treat, a thing to make her feel better about the world, melting sweet and safe against her tongue._

_“This is not an ice cream situation,” Rey repeats firmly. Ice cream is for treats. Not for comfort. For comfort, she turns to Mozart. “He does not deserve ice cream. His ice cream status has been revoked.”_

_“Did he get handsy with you?” Finn asks, his face somber._

_“If he had, he would have had another thing coming to him,” Rey growls. She doesn’t have time to be angry or upset. She has a paper due tomorrow, and really should memorize “Les Oiseaux_ _dans la Charmille” for her voice lesson the day after. She doesn’t need to think about fucking Zuvio any more than she already does. “No, he’s just a low-life and I’m not wasting any more time with him. Thought it was ok to make jokes about my mother.”_

 _Finn puts down his Ramen and comes and sits down on the couch next to Rey, and a moment later she’s crying into his shoulder. She doesn’t mean to be crying. She doesn’t_ want _to be crying. Zuvio doesn’t deserve her tears. But she is._

 _“I’d have hit him if he had said something insulting,” she sobs. “But no. It was_ just a joke _. Like I’m overreacting. I’m not overreacting, am I?”_

_“You’re underreacting,” Finn tells her darkly. “You usually do. Fuck Zuvio”_

_She feels better just having Finn there, understanding. Sometimes, she thinks that all she’s gone through in her life was so that she could have a friend like Finn—loyal and understanding and fierce. It almost makes the rest worthwhile, everything she’s lost, everything she’s suffered, to have Finn be a balm to her right now._

_“Why is it always tenors?” she mumbles into Finn. Teedo’s a tenor too._

_“The very tight pants.” Finn tries and she snorts. “How else can they hit notes that high? Must affect bloodflow to their brains and hearts as well. Next time pick a baritone.” He waggles his eyebrows at her. “You know you want to. Solo’s a—”_

_“I know Han Solo’s voice part perfectly well, thank you very much,” Rey laughs. “And I’m sure that’s what subconsciously brought us together—your_ voice part _.”_

_“Who am I to understand how the human brain works? I’m not a psych major,” sniffs Finn. “Anyway, fuck Zuvio.”_

_“Fuck Zuvio,” Rey agrees._

_She puts on_ Cosi Fan Tutti _because yes, she hates the plot of the opera with a burning passion, but the music is phenomenal._

❖

Of all the things to come back during dress, it is the slap.

They are sitting in the stage at the end of a long run—good god, they need to shave off an hour and a half—exhausted and ready to be released when Hux says, “It just doesn’t look real.”

“Looked real to me,” Amilyn shrugs.

“I don’t think a stage slap is going to work. Johnson’s just not a good enough physical actor to pull it off so I think—”

“I don’t much care what you think,” Rey snaps at him.

“Rey,” Snoke interrupts and Rey goes silent. “I believe you worked on this with Kylo, did you not?”

“Yes,” she replies. “You said it was much better in rehearsal.”

“Under the stage lights, sometimes everything is different,” shrugs Snoke.

“Under the stage lights, it’s that much clearer that you’re nowhere near as talented as you think you are,” she hears Hux hiss to Phasma.

“We can practice again,” Rey says, her mouth dry. She doesn’t care what Hux thinks. She refuses to care what Hux thinks.

But they’re in dress, and it’s her first show, and Snoke is _listening_ to him.

“If you and Kylo can find the time,” Snoke says idly. “If not—for the sake of the show, Rey, just hit him. He’ll get over it.”

 _I won’t_ , Rey says. It’s wrong to do it. Even if it ruins her career, right?

She can’t help it—she looks at Kylo. He’s examining a mark on the floor, as if he’s not even paying attention. She knows he is, though. She can tell from how tensely he’s carrying his shoulders.

When Snoke dismisses them, Rey hurries off the stage, leaving everyone in her wake. If she gets her blood flowing, breathes a little more deeply, things will get better.

“I’m trying to help you,” drawls Hux when he finds her in the coatroom, tugging her coat off a hanger. “You’ve never done this before and the stakes are high. Going in thinking that everything’s fine when it’s not would only lead to disaster.” He looks positively gleeful.

Finn and Rose have appeared in the door and Rey pushes past Hux and out into the hallway.

“You know I’m right, Rey. You weren’t ready for this,” Hux tells her.

“And yet here I was, cast for it,” she responds. She hates how weak her voice sounds. She’s good at standing up for herself. She’s had to do it so many times. Why is it different now? Because Kylo wouldn’t look at her.

“We all know that was a mistake, but it’s not a mistake that I’m going to let ruin the show,” Hux sighs as though he were explaining that two plus two equaled four. “We are a team.”

“Are we?” she asks.

“Yes,” he replies, then looking behind Rey, he says, “See? Saying it to her face, just like you wanted.” Rey turns and sees Rose standing there, looking horrified.

“I did not—”

“Hey man, fuck off,” Finn snaps at once.

“Ahh, the talentless sticking up for the talentless, I see.”

“Funny, I don’t see anyone sticking up for _you_ ,” Rose replies hotly, taking a step forward. She looks like she’s just about ready to bite Hux. “Some _team_ we are, you judging the talent of others without thinking about how you play into it.”

To make everything worse, Kylo shows up in that exact moment, clearly—like the rest of them—eager to get his coat and go home. Hux looks between him, and Rey, and says, “I didn’t realize that honesty was so unwelcome. But I suppose that’s just what happens when you have people who are arrogant enough to believe they are on the same level of talent as Kylo Ren.” He turns and leaves the four of them standing there.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Rose mutters under her breath and she takes off after Hux.

“Rose!” Finn calls and he hurries after her.

Rey just stands there looking at Kylo, who is watching Hux and Rose and Finn, who are now continuing their argument by the elevator. She can’t tell if she wants him to look back at her or not. When he doesn’t, she decides she’s relieved. She turns on her heels and makes for the stairwell. She’ll walk, it’s only a few flights. She doesn’t need to deal with Hux again, or wait for Kylo to get confused about how he feels, to see if he acts on that impulse he’s acted on so many times to try and comfort her when she thinks the universe is too big for her, or if he’ll just be silent and cede to Hux at last.

She thinks she hears him call “Rey,” as the door to the stairwell shuts behind her. She doesn’t wait for him though, and he doesn’t run after her.

❖

_She doesn’t let herself think about it anymore. She stopped letting herself think about it when she realized she had two contradicting memories: one where the car just drove away, and one where she heard her mother hysterically crying, screaming her name, not wanting to leave her behind._

_And she couldn’t tell which one was the truth: that her parents had abandoned her without a second thought or that her mother hadn’t wanted to but her father had made it happen._

_She doesn’t tell people about that. It makes her think she’s crazy when she does think about it, think about all the things she does because she wants to prove to herself more than anyone else that her parents might have loved her when there’s overwhelming evidence to the exact opposite._

_She doesn’t know why she still wants to forgive them, after everything. Maybe because she can’t remember anything before, and it’s easier to think that it was sweet, and soft, and warm when it wasn’t. Maybe because if she forgives them it’ll make it all ok, when really it never was._

❖

Rehearsal gets harder later that week when they begin to be in costume.

Stage lights are intense and overheating, but that’s never been much of a problem for Rey. She’s used to unrelenting heat and at least backstage is decently cool when she’s not singing. She’s even—to an extent—used to her costume. It’s not the exact same as the one they’d taken promo shots in, but she likes it well enough. Kaydel had adjusted the waistline, making her poking and prodding and the sheer discomfort Rey had felt worth it.

But the hardest part is Kylo.

Because he looks _really fucking good_ in his costume, just like he had during the promo shoot—dark tight pants, a flowing white blouse, his dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail with a velvet ribbon. She can see the line from his shoulders to his waist, and when he lopes across the stage, she remembers—vividly—the muscles of his chest and stomach, remembers holding his ass as she’d lost herself too much in the feel of him.

It’s even easier than it had been for the first dress to pretend to be in love with him. He sounds like Figaro, he looks like Figaro, he becomes the celebrated barber and he’s hers, despite the machinations of Bartolo and Marcellina, despite Almaviva’s interloping.

When she kisses him, his breath is hot, his lips soft. When he twirls her around in delight, his eyes shine up at her and she is sure he is pretending what he needs to pretend, pretending, probably, that she loves him and he loves her and that everything was easy and they hadn’t done anything to hurt one another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Les Oiseaux dans la Charmille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXKsOeccz8w)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey if you wanted to check the notes re: the first time Rey got triggered, now's probably a good time to do that for this chapter; if you didn't want to check the notes and were fine, it's plot relevant and you may not want to spoil yourself.
> 
> I'm going to be offline for a few days and am Fully Aware Of How I'm Leaving This Fic. Don't worry--It'll be completed in the New Year!
> 
> Happy New Year to everyone and thanks, eternally, for all your support! I will get to replying to your reviews, I swear.

“I’m planning on coming to opening night,” Leia tells her the next time they meet for coffee. “Unless you’d prefer I didn’t.” She looks determinedly at Rey, as though daring her to ask _but what about your son?_

Rey takes a sip of coffee, her mind moving quickly. _Am I an excuse?_ she wonders. An easy and convenient explanation for why she would go to the opening night of her son’s performance when he hasn’t seen her in years.

As if she’d read her mind, Leia says, “Despite what you may be thinking, I want to see _you_ perform, Rey, more than anyone else on that stage. I meant it when I said you remind me of me—full of vim and vinegar.”

Rey looks down at her hand.

Yes, vim and vinegar. That would have been what Amilyn Holdo saw and told her friend Leia about, would have been what Leia saw over brunch with Luke. She looks at Leia though and suddenly there’s a lump in her throat because with Leia, she hasn’t had to be vim and vinegar. Leia has given her support without asking, has cared about her, has let her be vulnerable.

“I’d like that,” she says quietly and Leia’s hand finds hers and squeezes.

“I don’t know what’s put that look on your face,” the older woman says gently, which is how Rey knows that whatever put the lump in her throat has made its way to her facial expression, “but whatever it is—you should know that you matter. That you are so very important, Rey.”

Her son had said the same thing, once. And she’d believed it coming from him too. Her eyes well with tears and she has to blink furiously to keep them from spilling out of her eyes.

“Do you like Mozart?” she asks Leia, who cocks her head with a wry smile on her face.

“Do I like—”

“Yes—do you like Mozart?”

Leia pauses, considering, turning her coffee cup in her hand, her eyes very far away. “Mozart is how I met Han and Luke. My Papageno and my Tamino. I used to sing Mozart to Ben when he was being fussy and it would calm him right down.” Leia gives her a sad smile. “My voice dropped in range after I hit menopause and Mozart hasn’t been the same since I can’t sing my old parts anymore. Mozart hurts these days. I think that’s because I love Mozart.” She gives Rey a smile that Rey recognizes all too well, one that is putting a brave face on pain. “And I look forward to hearing you sing his work.”

❖

_She gets home and the house smells like shit again._

_The toilet has regurgitated Unkar’s shit all over the place and the odor has permeated the house in the hot desert heat._

_“There’s a fucking plunger you know,” she mutters under her breath as she goes into the bathroom. She plunges the pipe, flushes and opens a window because Unkar had decided not to._

_When she’d first been brought to his house, small and scared and sad, she had thought to call him Uncle Unkar. She can’t remember when she stopped._

_She finds him in the living room, sitting on the couch, surrounded by beer bottles, watching some sports analysis show on ESPN. “We have a plunger,” she tells him._

_“What was that?” he belches up at her. His wife-beater is stained with a combination of beer and sweat. He’s been at this for a while._

_“I said we own a plunger. You can clean up your own shit.”_

_“You think just because you got into some fancy school that you’re better than me?” he asks her. “You’re free of all this and never have to think about it ever again?”_

_It’s anger, and the fact that she can still smell it everywhere, that has her saying, “I don’t need school or art to be better than you.”_

_He hits her so hard she has to run to the bathroom to vomit. He hits her so hard it hurts to breathe the next day in chorus rehearsal, her stomach bruised underneath her clothes though no one will know that by looking at her. By looking at her, they will see that Rey’s a little withdrawn today. That she looks a little pale. That she’s picking at her food even though her stomach is grumbling._

_But Rey does that sometimes._

_She always bounces back._

❖

It’s the final rehearsal, and Rey’s hair just won’t stay in the curled confection that they’d crafted it into. After about thirty minutes under the stage lights, the curls melt away into half-hearted waves, and after another twenty, her hair is falling flat and straight against her shoulders. 

She could have told them this would happen. Whatever genetics her parents had given her had made it so that it had never been able to hold a curl, no matter how hot the curling iron. It had frustrated all too many a costumer in conservatory.

But this isn’t conservatory. This is the day before the grand opening of Rey’s first production ever and her stomach is in knots as she tries to at least crimp the hair backstage between scenes.

“This is unacceptable,” Snoke berates the stage halfway through act three, not caring who he is shouting at. “She looks like a high schooler who’s never seen a mirror before, not a prima donna. Someone fix it.”

“Sir, we’ve put as much hairspray as is possible—” Kaydel begins, but Snoke rounds on her.

“ _Fix it_. At the very least I don’t want anyone to say she doesn’t _look_ the part.”

❖

 _There_ _are two ways that Rey handles the shit life gives her:_

_The first is the one that people associate with her most—to stand her ground, to fight, to attack, to defend with her dying breath. She fights for her friends, she fights for herself, she fights for what’s right, even when what’s right isn’t what everyone wants._

_The second is to smile._

_She smiles her way through bruises on her stomach that are so painful they’re more yellow and green than black and blue. Better to smile, though: the yellow and green fades in with her tanned skin. It’s less obvious that she’s in pain, and she doesn’t want to look week._

_She smiles her way through parents weekend in conservatory, where there is concert after concert, and students showing relatives around. It’s nice that they have people to come and care about them, to listen to them perform, to feed them. Rey learned to smile her way through_ parents _long ago. Easier to smile and hope that maybe this was all just some horrible mistake, that they didn’t mean to abandon her, that they love her and are searching for her, even now, and if she shines brightly enough they’ll find her than facing the obvious, facing the terrible, facing that which has the power to crush her time and time again._

_Know your enemy: she learned that from Unkar. She learned how to read him, learned when to stand up for herself and when to smile. She didn’t always choose correctly, but she knew, at least._

_So she smiles at her parents, every time. If she smiles, then she doesn’t let them crush her. That’s a victory, isn’t it?_

❖

Rey is sitting very still while Kaydel fiddles with her hair. “This is going to be better, I think,” she says. “Not as fancy, but then again, Susanna is a maid. It would be another story if you were Rosina.” Rey looks at herself. Her hair is wrapped in braids around her head, pinned tightly into place.

“If Snoke has a problem, we can do something else tomorrow,” she says. Because there will be a tomorrow. There will be a tomorrow, and the night after, and she’s starring in her first show, she really is. Her voice feels strong and warm, her costume fits her well, and the braids that Kaydel worked around her head are secure in place. “Will this work with Rose’s hair styling?”

“Better than what we had before, actually,” Kaydel says. Easy enough to fit something like this under that elaborate countess’ wig of hers.” She claps Rey on the shoulder. “Ready?”

“No,” Rey replies, her stomach fluttering with nerves. She hates when it does that, when she’s reminded she has a stomach—except when it’s full.

“Well, that’s not going to save you, I’m afraid,” Kaydel says.

Rey takes a deep breath and heads to the wings. Through the thick golden curtains, she can hear the rumbling of thousands of people filling the great opera house. Somewhere out there is Poe—here for Finn—and Leia—here for her. Her and her son. Because of course Leia is here for her son too. But that doesn’t mean she’s not here for Rey. Leia’s here for Rey, and Finn and Bebe, wherever they are, are here for Rey even as they do battle with their own nerves and Rose is here for Rey and Kylo—

She sees him across the stage, standing in the wings. His back is to her.

The stage manager brushes by and the voices on the other side of the curtain fade away. She hears applause—Amilyn taking the stand, she’s sure—and then the strings begin and the overture begins.

Kylo steps towards the middle of the stage, kneeling down in the center of it with his measuring tape. He doesn’t look towards Rey at all.

The curtains swing open and the lights hit him and he begins to sing. “ _Cinque…dieci…venti…trenta…_ ” and Rey bustles out onto the stage, carrying the basket of linens that Snoke had decided Susanna would be bringing to this room at this time.

She begins to sing and Kylo glances over his shoulder and she catches a surprised look on his face before he masters his expression and keeps singing.

True to Snoke’s bidding, true to each of their rehearsals, he is constantly touching her—her arms, her back, her sides. He has always been so attentive to that memory of her asking him not to touch her stomach.

Which is why she recoils when he does.

It’s only for a moment, and she sees his nostrils flare, hears a single note pass through his lips a little more staccato than it usually does, sees his eyes widen in horror before she stops noticing anything at all.

She isn’t Rey.

This isn’t her stomach.

She is Susanna.

Rey is nothing. No one.

Little and less.

❖

She is in a dream.

It is like she is watching someone else sing her parts. When she is offstage, she is numb, there is a tinny taste to her mouth, adrenaline and memory.

She doesn’t lash out the way she had, drunkenly, at Poe that one night in Union Square.

She doesn’t do anything that Rey normally does.

She can’t be Rey right now.

If she’s Rey, she can’t be Susanna, and she needs to be Susanna.

❖

“Rey?” she hears Figaro whisper. They are in the wings and he is watching her closely. His hands are at his sides and his eyes are wide in the darkness. He sounds frightened.

Odd that he should be frightened. Her Figaro has nothing to be afraid of.

She loves him with all her heart, even if he is a silly man who must be taught a lesson from time to time.

❖

Almaviva is concerned with her as well.

He should tend to his wife and leave her to her Figaro.

“Rey,” he whispers to her when she is watching from the wings. He takes her arm and she rips it away from him.

“Please unhand me.”

“Rey?”

“I said, please unhand me.”

❖

This is what it should be—her Figaro in her arms apologizing to her for not trusting her, for being jealous, for tainting the beauty of their relationship. How beautiful he is as he looks into her eyes. How she loves his voice.

She could exist like this forever.

Except she can’t.

She can’t because she isn’t in a moonlit garden with her love.

She’s standing on a stage and there are thousands of people applauding a performance she can’t even remember giving.

She wants to scream.

She wants to cry.

She wants to _hit him_ because she’d asked him not to touch her there and he’d done it and now she has to smile and pretend that everything’s all right when she can’t remember her debut, she doesn’t know if she was good, she—she—

She smiles.

Because that is what Rey does when the world is falling apart around her.

She smiles, and curtseys, and refuses to acknowledge anything that might make her break—especially the things that already have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The warning I noted in the topnotes--basically Kylo is going to accidentally touch Rey's stomach in the opening scene of the opening night of the opera and it's going to shut her down really quite intensely. That sequence begins in the "True to Snoke’s bidding," paragraph and basically lasts until the end of this chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

__

_You_ _were wonderful. Can I take you out for drinks, or is the cast planning something?_

Rey sees Leia’s text when she’s already halfway to Columbus Circle, still in stage makeup because she had wanted to just _get out of there._ She hadn’t seen Finn, hadn’t seen Kylo. She’d moved so very quickly that—she hoped—they’d both be hunting for her backstage while she is halfway to 125th Street.

 _Thank you,_ she replies, her hands trembling.

_I’m not feeling very well so I’m headed home right now, actually._

_Oh dear—well, I couldn’t tell, so don’t worry about that. You really were stunning._

She wasn’t herself.

She’d shut down, shut out, and would she never be free of it? Would it always be there, lurking in her mind, waiting for a moment of weakness—that creeping sense of nothingness that her parents had abandoned her with and which Unkar Plutt had beaten into her?

 _At least I was good,_ she thinks as she boards the train. Though Leia could be lying to spare her feelings.

There it is again, that thing she likes about New York. No one notices when the young woman in stage makeup begins crying on the train. That’s par for the course in New York City. There is an odd amount of privacy when surrounded by others.

❖

She sits on the floor of her shower under cold water, trying to breathe deeply. She is trying to remember and not remember at the same time. Trying to remember the performance but not remember herself in the performance. She remembers Bebe hiding behind her and Rose, remembers Hux singing of vengeance, remembers stage-slapping Kylo just as they’d practiced.

She remembers Kylo holding her in his arms, kissing her, remembers him—remembers him—

_I’m sorry I know you hate that I didn’t mean to_

_Rey?_

_Rey are you ok?_

_Rey?_

It takes her a moment to realize that her chest is heaving, that she’s crying again.

Not crying—sobbing. Big ugly sobs, that wrack her chest—all the louder because her voice is so very warm from singing. She clutches her knees to her—her folded legs protecting her stomach, protecting her heart as his words play over and over again in her head, now mixed with Finn’s.

_Rey?_

_What did you do to her?_

_I didn’t mean to—_

What did you do to her?

_You’re about to be on._

She likes the water. She likes the cold. It is the opposite of the warm, dry she had grown up in.

She cries herself dry but the heaving in her chest continues, which she decides is a good thing. If it keeps heaving, she’ll fill it with something—air, or misted water. She won’t feel quite so empty.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door.

“Rey?”

Maybe she feels numb because of the shower. It’s the middle of winter. She should maybe dry off.

“Rey, are you ok?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice, like her heart, like her stomach and head, like her soul, is hollow.

The door opens and she hears someone come in. Not Finn. Finn doesn’t have that light a step.

Bebe draws the curtain back and turns off the shower. She takes a towel from the bar hanging to her left and wraps it around Rey’s shoulders, crouching down next to her.

“Hey,” she whispers, taking Rey’s hand. “You’re gonna get sick again if you stay like this. And I don’t think that New York’s ready for Alvin and the Chipmunks to star in _The Marriage of Figaro.”_

It’s a sensible argument and Rey lets Bebe pull her to her feet and she secures her towel more firmly around her. Bebe leads her out of the bathroom and towards her bedroom. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Finn and Rose in the living room, watching her, looking anxious.

Bebe helps her find flannel pajamas, and a sweatshirt, and wraps her in her blankets, wraps a towel around her head and wrings the cold water out of Rey’s hair as best she can.

There’s a knock on the door and Bebe clambers off the edge of the bed and opens it.

Rey expects Finn, but instead, she hears Bebe snarling, “No. Not yet.”

“Yes, yet.” That’s Kylo’s voice.

“Look, I don’t know what the fuck happened, but you aren’t making it worse and I haven’t asked her—”

“Let me talk to her.”

“Hey man,” she hears Finn begin heatedly from behind Kylo, even as Bebe repeats, “Not _yet_.”

“Let him in,” Rey says. She sounds tired, even to her own ears. Which makes sense, she supposes. She’d sung in an opera and then cried herself into oblivion. She should be tired. “It’s ok.”

“Is it?” Bebe asks her—dark eyes glinting stubbornly. Rey loves her for that. Usually it’s her standing up for Bebe, who attracts creepy guys like moths to a flame, but she has never once doubted that her friend would murder for her if necessary.

“Go see Artoo and Threepio. It’s fine. I know you want to. I’ll be fine.”

“Rey,” Bebe begins.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Kylo says, making Bebe start. He pushes past Bebe, who glares at him, but clearly doesn’t feel as though she can prevent him doing it when Rey had explicitly told her to let him in.

“It’s fine,” she tells Bebe again and then, because she can see Finn and Rose in the doorway. “Really.”

“We’ll be out here if you need us,” Finn says firmly, his eyes on Rey’s face.

She nods, and the three of them leave, closing the door behind them.

Rey doesn’t look at Kylo. She can’t bring herself to. He’s here, in her apartment and he’s never been here before.

He’s here because he cares.

Odd, that. Of all the things she’d been aware of, and unaware of, she’d known the whole time that his caring for her had never faded. Maybe that’s why she’d clung onto hoping, onto waiting. Maybe that’s why he’d been so hurt—because he cared.

“Did you do it on purpose?” Her voice is low. But it is not wispy, weak, or weepy. It’s just low. A little tired, a lot quiet, but wholly hers.

“No—Rey—I promise, I didn’t.” She hears him swallow, and take a deep breath, and she can tell even without looking at him, from the way the bed is shifting underneath them both as he comes to sit next to her that he’s going to try to continue, but instead, Rey cuts him off with one word.

“Ok.”

Because she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to hear him beg her forgiveness, plead for her to understand that it had been a mistake, that he hadn’t meant to hit her in old wounds like that, it had just _happened_ and she means so much more to him than that, that she’d never want to hurt him please please just listen.

Because she knows that.

And she’s too tired of everything that her heart has gone through over the course of the past month to do it all over again—not when he’s here. Not when he’s here, and he cares, and he hadn’t meant it but he _does_ mean whatever feelings had brought him all the way to her apartment when by rights he should be celebrating with the rest of the cast, with Snoke.

So she buries her face in his chest.

She’d told him she didn’t have tears left to cry over him. And that’s the truth. She doesn’t. She’s crying for herself now—the sheer relief she feels, the safety she feels as he wraps his arms around her and clutches her to his chest as though he never wants to let her go ever again.

❖

They’ll be back for me. They’ll be back for me. They’ll be back for me.

_It is a mantra. Some people pray before they go to bed. Some people count sheep. Rey curls up in the bed in smelly Unkar Plutt’s smelly house and tells herself, over and over again, that they’ll be back for her._

❖

He just holds her.

He just holds her and lets her cry into his chest and then, when she is done crying, he keeps holding her. The angry, moody, hurt version of Kylo Ren that she’d had such trouble growing accustomed to over the course of the past month is gone. The Kylo who had only ever seemed to care about her is back.

When her breathing steadies, she pulls away from him and looks up, miserably.

“You know I didn’t mean it, right?” she asks him quietly.

He swallows and jerks his head in a nod.

“It made it worse,” he whispers, and Rey’s gaze drops to his neck because she can’t bear the hurt in his eyes. “ _I_ made it worse,” he corrects, his hand finding hers and sighing. He shifts slightly, as though he wants to wrap his arms around her but won’t touch her now that she’s pulled away.

He looks miserable in a way she’s never seen him look miserable before. It’s oddly calming.

“Except when you make it better,” she hears herself whispering. She takes his hand and he clings to it as tightly as he can, as though the very balance of his life exists in their clasped hands.

“I never make it better,” he says, his voice shaking.

“You’re making it better right now,” she replies. “You’re here. You’re—you came back to me.” She hears the words as if from far away.

But the way his eyes flicker at her, she thinks he might have heard it the same way she did.

“I think it was your hair,” he says after a moment, reaching his hand up to run over the towel that her head is still wrapped in. “My mom—she used to wear her hair that way and sing Mozart to me. Always had her hair in braids. And I—” he takes a deep breath and there’s a discomfort to his words that Rey can’t fault him for, “When I was little, and everything was overwhelming, I’d just hug her and press my face into her stomach and I think—I don’t know—it just sort of—”

He fumbles.

Rey catches.

“Instinct,” she says. “Do I remind you of her?”

“No,” he says too quickly, then, more slowly, “Maybe. The parts I used to like about her. The warmth, the feeling of safety, not being allowed to get away with my shit,” he gives her a fond smile. “Not letting anyone get away with their shit. But she’s not—you’re not—it’s not like—”

“No, it’s not,” Rey agrees. Or maybe she doesn’t. She’s too tired to know, and certainly too tired to care. Then, because she has to say it, “I didn’t want to fuck your dad. I wanted to fuck you.”

He closes his eyes. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “I know. I think I knew that even then. I just—I reacted, you know?”

“Oh I know,” Rey says darkly. She remembers her hand is still in his when it tightens. Then, more quietly. “I know.”

“I was scared,” he said quietly. “Scared you—”

“Weren’t what you thought I was?”

“Scared that you _were_ ,” he says fiercely. “Scared enough to put intention where there wasn’t any, and malevolence where I’d been so sure you were honest and loving and—” His face crumples. “I’m tired of hurting myself. I’m tired of hurting you. I’m tired of hurting both of us.”

“Same.”

“No,” he growls. “No, don’t you say _same_ when I’m trying to apologize. Most of this shit is mine.”

“I hurt you too.”

“You didn’t mean to and I went and did what I always do.” He runs his hands through his hair, tugging it slightly. “I didn’t think you cared about me, or wanted me. I put all these _lies_ into your voice so that it’d hurt less when really I should have just—” he stops, bending over and pressing his face into his knees. Instinct makes Rey run her hand over his back. Her other hand is still locked in his.

“My grandfather murdered my grandmother. Choked her to death,” he says to his knees. “And I don’t know if I killed my dad. I might as well have. He was stumbling because I was yelling at him, freaking out, walking towards him and for the life of me I don’t know if I reached out to grab him and pull him back to safety or to shove him down on the tracks. Doesn’t matter because he fell before I could touch him.”

And there it is—the truth that only Snoke seems to know about him.

“Guess murder’s as much in my bloodline as opera.” And then, he moans, “I’m so tired of being me.” He is breathing so heavily that Rey is sure he’s crying. There’s no way he can’t be, with his face pressed into his legs like that, his chest heaving like that. “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I’m tired of hurting people. I’m tired of hurting myself. If I lash out because I hurt, it means that the hurt has power over me, but I don’t know how to get out from under it because it does have power over me. It does.”

“Ben,” Rey whispers and he goes suddenly very still. She runs her fingers through his hair. It’s a little oily, and a lot stiffer than it had been when she’d first done this from all the hairspray.

She likes the way that name sounds on her tongue. _Ben_. She wonders when anyone but his mother had last called him that.

And a moment later he’s sitting up and now he’s wrapping his arms around her and pulling her down onto the bed. He doesn’t kiss her, or anything, he just holds her close to his chest, breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “For so much. Including making you comfort me when I fucked you up earlier tonight.”

“You are comforting me,” she says quietly.

“Yeah, because crying about my bullshit on your bed is—”

“You came back,” she says again. She can’t explain it more than that. She really can’t. He may never understand what sort of comfort that gives to her, but it’s a deeper comfort than any apology, any words. That she’d hoped and waited and he’d come back to her, understanding how much damage it had done and wanting to fix it.

She buries her head in his chest again and he hugs her a little more tightly.

They lie there for a long while, just breathing, just being. Then Rey hears the toilet flush and remembers that they aren’t alone in the apartment. She extricates herself from him. “I’ll be right back.”

He nods and lies there, watching her go. She closes the bedroom door behind her and moves quietly into the living room.

Bebe is settling onto the floor, staring at her phone and Rose is half-asleep on Finn’s shoulder, who has an arm around her.

“Please go to the cast party,” Rey tells them. Bebe looks up, putting her phone away and Finn sits up as though he’d been electrocuted, his arm leaving Rose. “Or to see your uncles, or—or whatever. I promise I’m all right now. Or all right enough. Better. I’m doing better. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Not how that works, I’m a worrywart,” Bebe says with a tone that would be cheerful if she weren’t clearly worried. She glances at Finn who is watching Rey.

It’s in that moment that she sees just how well Finn knows her—the way that he doesn’t press, the way that he just watches her and the way, she knows, he is assessing her tone, her stance, her demeanor, what had happened earlier. He gets to his feet and crosses the room and for a moment she thinks he’s going to make his way past her and go shout at Kylo, but instead he pulls her into a hug.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she promises him. “Go have fun tonight.”

“I think I’m funned out,” he says as he squeezes her. “But we’ll watch a movie, or something—if you want—” he adds, turning his head to look back at Rose.

“Movie sounds great,” Rose says. “I’m too tired to move, really, so I don’t think I could handle having to rub shoulders with Hux.”

Rey retreats back into her room where Kylo—Ben. It’s such a beautiful name. Habit tells her to call him Kylo, but Ben’s the one who came to her tonight. Somehow the distinction matters to her. She doesn’t know what it means—he probably doesn’t either—but she knows it matters.

Ben is still lying on her bed, just where she’d left him, his dark eyes on her as she crosses the room, clambers across the mattress and curls up in his arms once again.

Ben is a different sort of warm from the desert. He isn’t so dry he cracks her skin, and he’s not overwhelming. He’s just what she wants, so much warmer than the freezing shower. She melts into him willingly and it is not long before she is asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank you all so much for reading this. I've loved all of your comments and am so glad you stopped by to read this. It means so much more than I know how to articulate to all of you.
> 
> Sorry for the delay on getting this chapter posted. I left my personal computer at home on a work trip and didn't have the right version of the fic saved to my dropbox XD.

She wakes the next morning to find that Ben is already awake. He’s watching her sleep, his face a sleepy sort of unexpressive. His eyes soften when she turns to look at him, though, and he runs a hand along her arm.

“Hi,” he whispers, his fingers so soft against her arm.

And she leans forward and kisses him—because she wants to, because she can, because she thinks—knows—he wants to kiss her too.

She’s known bad breath before—the smell of stale alcohol, of stale vomit. She’s kissed exes in the morning and forged her way on, knowing that at some point she’ll get used to their breath—or she won’t. It won’t matter. Ben’s breath is sort of gross, but she sort of loves that. She also loves the way his stubble scratches against her face. If it were smooth, if it were perfect, it would be like a performance, and Rey’s tired of performing. She wants reality.

And reality with Ben early on a Saturday morning is delightful. His body is warm as he covers her with it, still wearing—she notes—the button down and dark slacks he’d been wearing the night before. Rey’s in ratty flannel pajamas she’s owned since she was thirteen. No performance, no pretense. They’d spent the night together and hadn’t planned on it. They had never planned on each other, but they’d happened to each other all the same.

Ben’s lips leave hers in favor of her neck, which she decides is a good choice. She hadn’t gotten used to his breath—though she had loved the softness of his lips against hers—and his stubble scratching at her neck is just as delightful as it scratching across her face. She arches her back up to press her chest against his, and sighs and runs her fingers through his hair.

It’s greasy. Very greasy. And oddly stiff from how he’d slept on it and the remnants of the hairspray he’d been coated in before taking the stage. And she loves every strand. She loves breaking apart the sprayed-together clumplets, the shell breaking under her fingers and his hair becoming softer, more pliant under her touch.

“I love your hair,” she whispers and he pauses from sucking at her neck, looking up at her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she replies.

He gives her a tentative smile and she loves his smile too, the way it just changes his face.

Kylo Ren has two expressions: angry and morose. Ben Solo smiles, though, a crooked half-smile that makes his dark eyes positively dance as he lowers his lips to her skin again and she knows she’s going to have a hickey there if he’s not careful and—“My costume is too low-cut for that,” she says pulling his hair a little bit. It’s a mistake, because the action only makes him suck harder. “ _Ben_.”

“Stage makeup,” he grouses into her neck.

“Come on,” she says, and she feels his hands drop to the sides of her shirt—not her stomach, as far back as he can fit his hands between her ribs and the mattress.

“How about somewhere else?” he asks.

“Where’d you have in mind?”

And he tugs at her shirt and a moment later his lips have found the underside of her breast and Rey gasps because that is divine. She had never noticed how soft the skin there is, and she bites her lip to keep from moaning as Ben rubs his lips over the spot he’d been sucking, then his stubble, and then he kisses it again, kisses his way up until he’s pulling a nipple into his mouth. He circles her skin with his mouth and the only thing that Rey can think to do is hold onto his hair.

Her unthinking hips begin to rub against his torso. She hadn’t realized how spread wide she was until this very moment because how wide does she have to spread her legs to fit him between them. She can feel her own dampness between a layer of ratty old flannel, and the heat of him there between her legs—well—it’s more than she knows what to do with.

And then, to make things that much more, she feels him hook his fingers into the waistband of her pajama bottoms and tug them further down her legs and—

Rey whimpers.

His fingers are sliding along her slit now, circling around her entrance, brushing lightly against her clit.

“Please,” she moans to him and she feels him smile into her tit. “Ben, please.”

He goes still, his hand stopping, his lips stopping. He looks up at her from halfway down her chest, and she doesn’t understand the look in his eyes.

But it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t understand because he says, “I’m—I’m not used to anyone but my mom calling me Ben anymore.” Rey feels her face heat, but his gaze is oddly steady despite that. His hand begins circling her slit again. He nudges her tit with his nose. “I like it—you calling me Ben.”

“I like it too,” Rey hears herself saying.

No pretending, no performance—they are what they are in that moment, and when his lips go back to suckle at her breast, she reaches a hand down and begins to fiddle with the buttons of his shirt.

Shirt and pants disappear, her pajama bottoms end up on the floor, and Ben’s between her legs, and she can see him even more clearly in the morning light—the way his muscles ripple, the way his skin flushes as she sits up to kiss his chest while he lines himself up to push his way into her and—

And she flinches.

She’s wet, but she’s not ready—not the way she had been in his bedroom. He catches the way she stiffens and pulls back at once.

“It’s fine,” she tells him, but he’s already gone, kissing his way down her chest again, diverting to the edge of her rib cage, pulling himself lower and lower, his lips trailing along the seam of her thigh and hip and then his tongue is running along the edge of her, light, and warm, and Rey’s breath gets a little bit shaky as she widens her legs for him again and lets him sink into her.

His mouth is magical.

She’d known that, though, from the first moment she’d kissed him, from the first moment she’d heard him sing. His lips are soft, his tongue is precise, and he plays Rey like an instrument, listening to her sighs and making them crescendo into moans, into full-throated cries until she is gasping, breathless, warm, relaxed.

And this time, when he tries to push into her, she’s more than ready for him. She doesn’t need to stretch around him, he’s relaxed her fully, and when his lips find hers again, they don’t taste like the morning, they taste like her, and she finds that she likes it.

They begin to dance, hips moving together, arms trailing up and down one another, rolling this way and that across her bed. One moment he’s on top, his chest curled slightly away from her so that he can suck at her neck again, so that he can kiss her lips—and then it’s her on top of him, riding him more slowly than he wants because she is relaxed, she can take it easy, she can enjoy this, she can go at her own pace—until her pace is not enough for him and he rolls her over again, hitching her legs up around his hips, driving into her as deep as he can go.

She likes him there—between her legs, his lips against hers, breathing the same breath as her, pumping the same blood, dancing the same dance. Their groans sound good together, but that doesn’t surprise her. Their voices have always melded well.

He comes apart with a cry and this time and collapses forward onto her, crushing her to the mattress, and Rey kisses the side of his face while his breathing steadies, while his heartbeat settles down to match hers.

❖

At some point—she’s not sure entirely how—she pulls herself out of bed to scope out the bathroom situation. Between her, Finn, and Ben, they all have call at the same time and they only have one shower. Finn’s door is closed, but she finds him in the living room with a cup of coffee, watching a tv show that’s muted but has closed captions running.

“Hi,” she says tentatively. She hadn’t realized that Finn might be able to hear everything coming through the door of her bedroom, but when he looks up there’s no teasing in his eyes, or frustration. He just pats the sofa next to him and she sits down next to him, fully aware that she probably smells a lot like sex and sweat right now, and she’s sure without having looked in the mirror yet that there is definitely a hickey on her neck.

Finn doesn’t care though.

“Tell me about better,” he says carefully.

“We worked it out,” she says, knowing that’s not the answer to the question he’s asking.

“I gathered as much, given that he stayed the night,” Finn says neutrally. “Tell me about better.”

“I don’t know if it will happen again.” Rey’s breath gets shakier than she wants it to. “It was…” She swallows. “Past stuff, you know?”

Finn wraps an arm around her shoulder and she knows that it’s enough for him. She doesn’t have to say anymore.

“You should see a shrink,” he says carefully. “Or someone. I don’t know. Have you ever?”

Rey shakes her head.

“You definitely should,” he says. “You’ve got trauma and it scares me to watch it rear its head and not know what to do.”

“I know,” she whispers.

“If he hadn’t been here yesterday, how could I have helped?” Finn asks.

“Just by being you,” Rey says.

“That’s not an answer,” Finn replies gently.

“I don’t know what is,” she says, but she takes a deep breath. Finn’s right, of course. Of course he’s right—he knows her better than anyone in the world. “But I can talk to someone and try and get you one.”

Finn smiles at her and she smiles back, then rests her head on his shoulder the way that Rose had the night before. Finn’s door had been closed. He never closes his door.

“Did Rose stay?” she asks him quietly.

He stiffens. Then relaxes with a slow exhale. “Yeah,” he says. “I—yeah she did.”

“She wants to kiss you,” Rey points out.

“I know. And she has. Quite a bit, actually.”

Rey sits up, frowning at him and he rubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t want to talk about it while you were clearly so fucked up about Kylo. It felt like rubbing your face in it a bit.”

“I can be happy for you and sad about whatever was happening. I’m capable of more than one emotion at once.”

“I wasn’t worried about more than one emotion so much as this on top of the nineteen you were already working on.”

“And I would have liked a happy one,” she counters before a smile spreads across her face. “This is a dumb argument.”

“It is,” Finn agrees with a grin.

“So should Ben and—”

“Ben?”

“Ben,” Rey repeats.

“Huh,” Finn says. “Hell of a lot less pretentious than Kylo.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Should Ben and I race you two for the shower then?”

“It won’t be a race. She sleeps like the dead,” he says.

Rey leans forward and kisses his cheek before getting up from the couch.

“I’m happy for you,” she tells him with a grin.

“And I’m happy for you,” he replies.

❖

 _Are_ _you feeling better?_

Rey’s heart swells from Leia’s text.

 _Much, thank you!_ Rey replies, before adding _And thank you for offering to take me out for drinks last night—I really would have loved to go._

_How about brunch then?_

Ben’s sitting on her bed, wearing a shirt that does not fit him at all, but which Finn had consented to lend him.

She takes a deep breath.

“Your mother invited me out for brunch,” Rey says and his gaze snaps up to her. “Would you like to join us?”

She watches him consider, watches as he weighs it all—Snoke, Rey, his father, his mother. She watches and waits quietly as his breaths get deeper and shakier.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Yeah, all right. For you,” he adds.

Rey shakes her head. “No. If it’s for me, then I don’t want it. For her, or for you. But not for me.”

His gaze doesn’t leave hers. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he mutters.

“Probably,” Rey replies without missing a beat. “For her or for you.”

He sucks his lips between his teeth for a moment, then says, “Yes.”

She nods, and replies to Leia.

_I’d love that. Would you mind if I brought a guest?_

❖

Leia stops dead in her tracks when she sees Rey and Ben sitting there at the table, waiting for her. Her eyes flick between the two of them for a moment, undoubtedly taking in both of their wet-from-the-shower hair and the bruise blossoming on Rey’s neck before landing more firmly on her son.

“I was wondering how you’d gotten the table if we weren’t all here,” she says at last, sitting down next to Rey. Her hand finds Rey’s and squeezes it tightly and doesn’t let go.

“Ben’s persuasive,” Rey says. He’d glared down his nose at the poor hostess and raised his eyebrows and that had been that. Part of Rey had been livid at the display. Another part of her had thought it was a little bit hot.

“Yes,” Leia agrees. “Ben’s—” she cuts herself off and looks at Rey. She takes a slow breath, a singer’s breath, an _I’m going to be using killer breath support_ breath, “persuasive.” And the way she says it, Rey is sure that Leia is also saying _so are you._

Rey looks down at the menu and Leia’s hand finally leaves hers.

When she peeks up again, she sees that Leia and Ben are staring at one another, and it looks like they are saying a million wordless things with their matching brown eyes.

At last, Ben breaks the silence. “My treat.”

“Oh come on. What’s the good of having a mother if you don’t let her take you out to brunch.”

“My treat,” Ben repeats firmly. “What’s the good of having a son if he can’t take you out to an apology brunch.”

Leia raises her eyebrows briefly. When they fall again, though, her expression is somber. “You’re not the one who should be apologizing.”

“I am,” he says firmly.

“So am I, then. Ben—there’s so much—” She looks at Rey, who continues to pretend to read the menu.

“You are a much better actor than Snoke always said,” Ben says dryly. “I almost believe you haven’t already picked the Eggs Benedict.”

“The waffles might change my mind,” Rey replies lightly.

“Can we just have brunch?” Ben asks his mother. “And we’ll—we’ll figure the rest out later?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Rey sees Leia nod. Then her hand finds Rey’s again and her grip is even tighter than before.

❖

The stage makeup works decently well to cover up the _unbelievably large_ hickey Ben had given her. But even if it doesn’t, Rey decides, it doesn’t matter. So what if the audience sees a bruise on Susanna’s neck, especially since Figaro presses his face there, sings to it almost lovingly in the first scene. He had clearly made his mark.

The spotlights are blindingly bright—white that turns the darkened opera house black against its brightness. She can see Amilyn conducting from the front, but other than that—they might as well be alone. For these first moments, they are. It’s just the two of them, Ben and Rey, and she feels his heart in the music. She feels her own.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for stopping by! I've decamped from tumblr, but you can find me [here](http://pillowfort.io/crossingwinter) on pillowfort and [here](https://twitter.com/crossing_winter) on twitter.


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